


All According to Plan

by Glackdos



Category: RWBY
Genre: Action/Adventure, Disability, Existential Crisis, F/F, F/M, Family, Internal Conflict, Politics, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 40,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27570013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glackdos/pseuds/Glackdos
Summary: The Vytal Festival Tournament was in its quarterfinals when Cinder Fall decided to enact her scheme to devastate Vale and take the rest of her power. It paid off, but not for her. As it turns out, Beacon's youngest student had been hiding her true intentions for quite some time.Now in command of an army of military drones and a super weapon capable of harnessing the destructive power of nature itself, former huntress in training Ruby Rose leaves Beacon Academy and any potential of a future within the kingdoms. In the wake of such an event her family, friends, classmates, mentors, and enemies struggle to cope with this new status quo born to a small girl with a terrible ambition.To destroy the monsters that keep humanity cowering behind walls.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Sun Wukong, More Tagged As Story Continues, Penny Polendina/Ruby Rose
Comments: 15
Kudos: 86





	1. The Greatest Trick: Yang

A tournament was a desperate thing in Remnant. Though clad in the finery of honorable combat between equals and the strengthening of relations between nations, a great yearning lay underneath. The people hoped the entertainment could distract them from the reality of their lives. They wanted the preview of their future guardians to make them feel safer in the coming years. They needed the sensation of bloodshed without sacrifice so the next violence they would be thrust into might be just a little more bearable.

All this desperation charged the crowd as every set of eyes on three continents tuned into the quarterfinal matches of the Vytal Festival, their cheers powerful enough to shake through borders. This was more than a slight irritation to the only girl in Amity Colosseum who wasn’t allowed to observe the events transpiring.

“Ugh, this sucks!” groaned a highly frustrated teenager as another round of spectation vibrated through the walls of the emergency containment unit she had been confined to. Yang Xiao Long was, unfortunately, missing the finals due to what she could only describe as the mother of all frame-ups. The silver haired jackass attacked her, she knew he did. Unfortunately for her, the cameras and the thousands of eye witnesses said different. When she explained what happened to her team (after the confiscation of her weapons and personal effects, of course) they, at least, seemed to agree with her. Well, Blake and Weiss seemed skeptical at first, but Ruby never once doubted that something was going on. 

Taking a moment to mentally thank her little sister for always having her back, Yang lounged on the generously provided cot, wracking her brain to find anything of interest in her little prison. Her dad had always warned her lock-up wouldn’t be a fun place to end up in, but she was really hoping for the other kind of un-fun. The kind that involved alpha-male numb-skulls who thought she was easy prey. Here, the was nothing to fight, nothing to mess with, no distraction whatsoever. Just three boring walls and a boring ceiling of drab cement, one boring wall of iron bars, a boring sink at the far end, a boring stainless steel toilet right next to it, and probably a couple of boring robots standing outside the main doorway instead of giving her literally anything to talk to for the next several hours.

Yang was 80% sure this was her nightmare.

In a desperate attempt at escape, Yang reflected back on the last decent conversation she’d had in the last day or so. While the team agreed on Yang being put under some kind of illusion, there was some debate as to who and why. Weiss was under the impression this was petty unsportsmanlike conduct through the aid of one of Mercury’s teammates in order to ensure whoever defeated them wouldn’t advance to victory. Blake, on the other hand, thought it might be the work of the White Fang recognizing RWBY as threats to any future plans and ruining their credibility in advance. Ruby didn’t seem to have an opinion, though Yang imagined she was withdrawing any comments for a more personal reason. After all, Emerald and Ruby had become fast friends over the quarter. It was probably difficult for her to accept any sort of misconduct coming from someone who’d been so nice to her up to this point. As for Yang, well she didn’t have a clue. She had been more concerned with having lost her chance at an honest one on one with Pyrrha than with whatever weird scheme her team would inevitably smash to bits upon discovery.

That pleasantly hubristic line of thought was cut short as Yang suddenly felt the entire room shake. That was odd. Getting up from her bed to try and get a peek outside the bars of her cell, she didn’t see anything at first. Figuring it must have been some brief error in the stadium’s stabilization, she turned to walk back to her resting place. Two steps later and the sound of gunfire and panicked screaming graced her ears. Rushing back to the bars, she caught a glimpse of a White Fang grunt, passing by the doorway leading to the hallway.

“Oh shit,” Yang exclaimed as the realization dawned on her. That was apparently unwise as the very same grunt did a double-take and peered into the room. Grinning, he stepped in, leveling his rifle with obvious intent to harm.

“I was hoping I’d run into you,” the man sneered, “The entire Fang wants you and your friends dead. Guess I hit the jackpot.”

Now, getting shot is never fun. Even when wearing armor, the impact stings worse than the millionth time your little sister gives you a playful poke with those razor sharp fingernails you swear she sharpens intentionally. Yang didn’t have armor. Yang just had full aura, which meant little for a civilian, but a lot for a huntress who could survive being punched through a cement pillar. Staggering a little, Yang took a firm grip of the bars. Slowly, spitefully, she tilted her head upwards to level a glare at the unlucky son of a bitch, her eyes a scathing red.

“Bad move, buddy.”

Three distinct sounds were heard. First, the reinforcements of the cell door straining under the pressure of Yang’s enhanced strength. Second, the high register of Yang’s rage filled battle cry. Third, the even higher register of the White Fang soldier’s panic filled scream. The door buckled under the overwhelming force of Yang’s hands, launched directly into the path of the poor grunt and pancaking him against the wall. Dusting off her palms and giving a little whistle, Yang Xiao Long strode through the open threshold once again a free woman.

What Yang saw as she made her way through the inner portions of the stadium would haunt her for a very long time. Bodies were strewn about: some White Fang, some Atlas security, and some civilian. The White Fang were pushing through, somehow managing to smash the Atlesian troops without much trouble. Yang noticed an Atlesian knight open fire on the men they were supposed to be supporting. Clearly, something was very wrong.

Yang caught her first break when she heard the telltale humming of a Schnee glyph. Following it down a corridor, she found the first pair of friendly faces she had seen all night. Weiss, fencing through a trio of drones with all the proper grace of a ballerina. Blake, covering their backs with a blurring cleaver. 

“Yang! Oh, thank god!” Blake exclaimed when she noticed her friend approaching. Finishing the last knight off with a decapitating swipe, she turned to give Yang a tight hug.

After returning the embrace for a few moments, the two separated. “What’s going on?” Yang inquired, still eyeing each of them for any sign of injury.

“The White Fang must’ve decided to enact their big plan in the middle of the finals,” Weiss explained as she checked the Dust levels in Myrtenaster’s cylinder. “All the sudden fighting broke out over the stadium. Looks like they compromised the automated security too.”

“What about Ruby?! Is she okay?!”

“She was safe, the last time we saw her,” Blake assured. She hesitated with her next set of words, as though confused by the topic herself, “She… started acting kind of weird when the fighting broke out. She mentioned something about the control center and sped off,” she handed Yang a pair of gold bracelets she had been keeping on her hip, “She told us to get you out and head for the hangar bay.”

“The hangars? Why?” Yang inquired as she fastened the bracelets to her wrists, grateful to have her girls back.

Weiss gave a small shrug, head darting back and forth for any new threats. “If I had to guess, she wants us to get off the stadium before whatever she thinks is going to happen happens.”

“And what about her?”

“She didn’t say before she took off. She’s probably going to meet us there… right?”

An all too familiar panic wormed its way through Yang’s spine and up into her brain. Ruby couldn’t have been that reckless, right? She was supposed to be done with that lone wolf act after their entrance exam. And yet…

With a flick of her wrists Ember Celica came to life over Yangs forearms, barrels and shells locking into place with an audible click. “Screw that, we’re going to her.”

As the three pushed forward into the control center, they were stopped by the sight of a frightfully broken Team JNPR. Jaune and Nora were both bruised and bloodied, though their status was minor compared to the unconscious forms in their arms. Ren and Pyrrha . The two conscious members of the team looked more shaken than the girls had ever seen them.

“What happened?!” Weiss exclaimed as she checked over the battered forms of her friends.

Nora didn’t seem capable of speech, instead just tightening her grip on Ren a little more. Jaune, however, cleared his throat and began in a shaky voice, “That Atlas girl, Penny. She’s working for the Fang. We were in the area, saw her acting weird. Decided to talk to her, see what was up, then she attacked us out of nowhere. We almost had her beat, but all the sudden Ruby showed up and…” his breath caught in his throat as he looked down at Pyrrha, before shaking his head a few times, “There was an accident. She told us to retreat and get them some medical treatment. Last I saw she’d used her semblance to get by.”

Yang’s eyes widened as she considered what she’d just heard. Ruby was now between a brainwashed screwball girl who could rip airships out of the sky and God knows who was inside that room. Those were lethal odds. 

“We need to get through there, now!” she cried as she took off past her friends.

“All right, you get them to the medics. We’ll take care of the rest,” Blake spoke calmly as she and Weiss started moving again, as well.

The girls caught up to Yang quickly and the three found themselves entering a wide open room. Before they could take a step forward, a sword embedded itself in front of each of their feet. Standing directly in the way of their goal was a tiny, copper haired girl with another seven swords floating eerily behind her. Penny, but… not Penny. Her rigid stance suggested nothing of her normal personality. Where there was usually some manner of cheer and playfulness to her face, even in the midst of battle, now there was just some neutral mask with no care to express even a hint of emotion.

“Penny,” Yang took a step over the sword in front of her to advance on the girl who thought it was smart to be in her way right now, “What do you think you’re doing, right now?”

“Unauthorized personnel are not permitted past this point.” The response sounded like something you would hear from a door with a keypad on it, not a girl with freckles dotting her cheeks.

Yang paid no mind to the warning, instead choosing to keep her foreboding pace until she crossed into melee range. She took no pleasure in doing this. Penny was a friend to the team, at least she thought. Hell, Ruby was head over heels for her in a way Yang hadn’t thought was even possible for her little sister. She’d caught the significant glances, the hushed tones, the tension in the air, all of it. How many “totally not dates” had Yang caught the two of them on in the last two weeks, alone? But that didn’t matter now. She pulled her weapons and got in the way. Everything that happened next was off Yang’s conscience.

Penny made the first move, uprooting one of her three ground blades and sending it hurtling at Yang’s unprotected back. Fully anticipating this move, Yang ducked her head and let it whip right past before winding up and throwing out a hard right cross aimed squarely at the other girl’s jaw for a quick knockdown. That ingeniously simple plan was thrown into question when the petite ginger stopped the punch in its tracks with a single hand, then changed its trajectory to avoid the fiery shotgun blast intended to punctuate the blow.

That wasn’t right.

When Yang’s attempt at freeing her hand from this absolute vice grip got her nowhere, she threw out her left in the hopes of getting Penny to back off. The result was the same as it had been the first time. With both arms trapped, Yang could only struggle with her own disbelief. Blake had told Yang about the things she’d seen Penny do that night at the docks. They were insane, but everything Blake said was about the swords. There was nothing in the account that would suggest such a tiny girl would be able to physically overpower Yang’s punches. She could count the Beacon students who could on one hand.

Yang’s reflection on the absurd was cut short as she noticed Penny’s swords twisting to face her. Eight sharp tips folded back, revealing eight barrels brimming with green energy. Behind her, Yang could hear the other two planted swords yank themselves from the ground, most likely aiming to stab her in the back. If Penny expected Yang to start panicking, that wasn’t happening. She was backed into a corner, but she wasn’t out of it yet.

Before the deciding blow could be struck, Weiss and Blake made themselves aware to the battle. A pattern of black light materialized on Yang’s back, freezing the two swords in place before they could pierce flesh. Eight shots then rang out from Blake’s pistol, each throwing a blaster off target the instant before the searing beams of light emerged from them. Taking initiative while she could, Yang lifted both her legs into Penny’s chest and kicked off. The impacted area was a lot harder than she was expecting. Her feet protested at a pain akin to being shoved through an armored car door, but the force of her counter was enough to loosen Penny’s grip and allow her escape.

Rolling back to regain her footing, Yang prepared to renew her assault, only to be taken off guard when a pair of Weiss’s glyphs appeared beneath hers and Penny’s feet. In an instant Yang and Penny had switched places like pieces in a shell game, Yang’s back now only a few feet from the doorway.

“Go find Ruby!” Weiss called out as she moved to thrust her rapier into Penny’s back, the attack proving fruitless as another floating blade spun down meet her. “She’ll need you!”

“We’ll handle this!” Blake affirmed as she also sped in to flank their opponent, cleaver too being intercepted before it could reach its mark.  
Yang didn’t bother arguing, knowing that Ruby was probably dealing with something even worse than this. Throwing both her fists forward, Yang unleashed a blast from each gauntlet. The recoil sent her flying through the doorway and into the hallway. She gave one last glance to the friends she was leaving behind before turning herself around and taking off in a sprint towards whatever Ruby had thrown herself into.

When Yang entered the control center of Amity, she dreaded what she might find. Was Ruby winning the fight or losing? Had she held on long enough for her sister to show up and help or was she already unconscious? Or worse? She didn’t even want to put that worse into words lest it come true. Still, when she finally made it to where all the action was supposed to be, in no way was she expecting to see the business end of Crescent Rose’s rifle form while Ruby typed away at a console with her free hand.

“Sis, what are you-“

“My sister Yang used to sleep with a stuffed dog until she was thirteen. What was its name?” Ruby asked coldly, not bothering to turn and face her visitor. Whatever she was doing with the computer, it commanded the majority of her attention.

“What are you talking about?” Yang asked, clearly very confused by her baby sister’s alarmingly serious behavior.

“Answer the question or I shoot,” Ruby demanded, finger brushing the trigger for good measure, “What was the dog’s name?”

“Okay, okay. Jeez,” Yang responded with minor annoyance, “His name was Smokey and he was a bear… and I stopped sleeping with him when I was nine!”

“No you didn’t,” Ruby quipped as she holstered her gun. With her second hand free, she doubled her focus on the console before her, “Sorry. I had to make sure you weren’t just that umbrella girl in disguise.”

Before continuing the conversation, Yang surveyed the rest of the room. Three bodies lay strewn across the floor. Two of them had been burned to the point of being unrecognizable. The third was that of a woman. She had hair like black ash and her skin was fair in the places it wasn’t stained with blood. “Is that…”

“Cinder Fall,” Ruby responded as she kept typing. “Leader of Emerald and Mercury’s team, go figure. Mastermind behind Roman’s Dust robbery spree, the White Fang’s increased aggression, and the virus that was formerly commanding all the Atlesian knights to attack the stadium.”

“Formerly?”

“Her scroll was what she used to control them. Once I dealt with her, I took it and ordered all the drones to capture the White Fang forces and put them in a few airships.”

“Wait, why send them to the airships? Shouldn’t we keep them in the arena?”

“No, everyone needs to evacuate.”

Well, that sure was news to Yang. “Why?”

Ruby let out a sigh, shoulders slumping a bit as she did. Yang knew the kind of stress that made her do that, which worried her all the more. “Because, she overclocked the biome generator and I can’t stop what’s coming next.”

“And what’s that?” Yang inquired tentatively. There was something different about Ruby. She was sharper, more focused. Usually, the only time she got like this was during a hunt or making a major weapon upgrade.

“The stadium is going to create a tornado. It’ll kill everyone still in the stands and move on to weaken the walls keeping the Grimm out of Vale. With most of the experienced huntsmen stuck up here, the city won’t last long. But, if I can manage to move Amity outside the kingdom and alter the targeting for something less important in the twenty minutes it’s going to take to charge up, we can keep casualties to a minimum.”

Wow. That was some plan. Yang was surprised her sister could think up something like that so quickly. She paused a second, “Ruby, how do you know all this? Did Cinder tell you before she…?”

Ruby sighed again and Yang caught the look of guilt in her eyes, “No, she didn’t.”

“Then, how did you figure it all out so fast? Blake mentioned you went straight here after the fighting broke out.”

Ruby refused to look her sister in the eye. Instead, continuing to focus on the set of coordinates she was typing in.

“Ruby… Did you know about this?”

Another sigh, like she was trying to bleed all the stress from her body, “Yes.”

“For how long?”

“…”

“Ruby! I said for how long.”

Ruby was shaking at this point, but she kept on typing. “Since before we got into Beacon.”

The confession hit Yang harder than the bullets she’d stomached earlier. “How… Why... What do you...?”

“I-I didn’t tell anyone because… because I planned on taking it, instead.”


	2. The Greatest Trick: Emerald

Unlike her three “team members”, Emerald was not a fighter by trade. Sure, she could handle herself with Grimm and draw on huntsmen with lightning efficiency, but enforcement and assassination were more Mercury’s assignment. She shined in areas requiring stealth, cunning, and nimble fingers. That was why, rather than raising hell up at Amity, she had been sent down to the practically empty Beacon Academy for some good old fashioned vault cracking. Her joy at having a real challenge worthy of her status as a thief after weeks of barely being allowed to pick pockets was only slightly dimmed by the endless stream of blithering complaints coming through her earpiece.

_“I mean, I feel like I got the most screwed out of everybody involved in this plan. I have to throw my fight against one of the pests who’ve been in our business for months, then I get to experience the oh so pleasant sensation of having my leg broken with shotgun, AND NOW I don’t even get to join the battle that will go down in history as one of the biggest bloodbaths ever BECAUSE I’M SUPPOSED TO BE STUCK IN A CAST.” ___

____

____

Emerald gave an exasperated sigh as she tore into the wiring of Ozpin’s personal elevator. Hopefully she could hack the controls and ride it straight down to the vault that Cinder said held the key to her power. “You’re such a little girl, today. Look, Roman’s been in prison for three weeks and Adam is going to die with everyone else in the stands. You honestly think you’ve got it worse than either of them? Do you know what they do to guys like Roman in prison? I’ve seen, uh, certain films that detail it. Not pretty… unless you’re into that…”

_“…Okay, I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear a word of what you just said and you’re going to clear all our browsing history before Cinder finds out and punishes us both. Anyway, how are you coming on this vault thing?” ___

____

____

“I’ve just about got the elevator working. After that, it’s just a quick ride to the bottom to pull the plug and I’ll be out in a flash.”

The most interesting thing about this break-in was that it wasn’t an object they were after. It was a girl on life support. Amber Autumn. Cinder had only uttered that name once in Emerald’s presence. It was like she had some kind of aversion to it. Like she feared the woman she’d all but killed. Emerald had no idea why that could be, since Cinder was so unflappable in regards to everything else. It didn’t matter, though. If the order was to kill this girl, Emerald would be her butcher without hesitation. After all, morality was totally subjective. The only people that couldn’t see that were the ones that had never lived in the real world.

At last, the elevator started moving. As she waited to reach the bottom floor of all bottom floors, she did her best to not go crazy from her partner’s prattle. He’d begun loudly occupying his thoughts with what they ought to do with all the Atlesian knights once Amity was completely theirs. Something about programming each of them with different combat styles and creating a robot fighting league. It sounded like the stupidest thing she had ever heard. Par for the course with the team’s muscle, though. He was a savant when it came to fighting, but lacking in every other area.

The elevator came to a stop and opened to reveal what could easily be called a catacomb. How Ozpin managed to construct something this large underground with only a handful of people knowing it had to have been an insanely expensive feat. Most likely at the cost of much effort by his second in command. Emerald really did not envy that woman’s position as super maid to a school filled to the brim with walking disaster areas.

Strolling down the wide corridor, she was confused to find… nothing. No girl in critical condition. No life support systems monitoring her every vital sign. Nothing. “Aw crap,” the outlaw groaned as she put a finger to her earpiece, “Merc, we’ve got a problem. I think they moved the target. Cinder isn’t gonna be happy about this…” Expecting some smug comment about her lack of ability in her job, Emerald was surprised when, instead, the line was completely silent. “Mercury, did you read me?”

_“Emerald. You need to get out of there, right now.” ___

____

____

“What? I can’t do that! I need to find a lead on where the target was moved to.”

_“No point anymore. Cinder’s…” ___

____

____

The thief was taken by surprise at how shaken her partner sounded. Unless he had to put on an act, he rarely sounded anything but overconfident in every way, “What are you talking about? What happened to Cinder?!”

Before he could respond, Emerald felt her scroll vibrate. Looking at it, she saw it was a multimedia message sent from Cinder’s device. Taking a deep breath, she pressed play. A voice, one she knew and hated, rang out through the speaker.

_“To the ‘teammates’ of Cinder Fall. Mercury Black, Emerald Sustrai, and, heh, ‘Mint’. Amity Coliseum is now under my control. The White Fang have been captured, the Atlesian knights are following my commands, everyone is being evacuated through the airships as we speak, and the tornado meant to devastate Vale and create a breach in the city wall will, instead, be used exterminate the mass of Grimm making their way toward the kingdom. Oh, and one more thing. As you can see,” Video began playing on the screen. The image on display tore at Emerald’s guts as she had to will her dinner back down her throat, “Cinder Fall is dead. Your pictures have been put on every television screen and hologram tuned to watch the tournament and your personal information has been sent directly to the Atlas fleet. You three are now among the most wanted criminals in all four kingdoms for conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, murder, theft, attempted murder, and pretty much every bad thing the White Fang has done since its creation. If you had any intention of staying in the city to tie up loose ends, I think you’re out of luck. Consider this warning as me honoring the fake friendship you and I had, Emerald. Start running and don’t stop. I won’t be hunting you, but the rest of the world will be. And Mercury? Have fun running in that cast.” ___

____

____

Emerald’s scroll went hurdling towards the nearest wall, shattering into countless pieces on impact as the thief let out a scream of rage and despair. Cinder was gone. The woman who had found her on the street, taken her in, honed her skills, literally given her the clothes on her back, and with all that provided a cause to believe in when she had nothing to live for. Gone forever. All because of some kid. A little girl who never should have even been at this school. How had she done it? How did she out think the smartest, most ruthless woman Emerald had ever known?

The outlaw hadn’t noticed when exactly she had fallen to her knees and started sobbing on the floor. It was difficult to say if she even remembered where she was. It didn’t matter, anymore. Nothing mattered but the pain. She wished she had something to hit, something to kill. Anything she could pass the pain onto. But the room was just a massive, empty space. The only company she had were the echoes of her own weeping.

_“Emerald? Emerald, you need to listen to me!” ___

____

____

Emerald sniffled, only just remembering the voice in her ear, “Go to hell! Like you could even—”

_“Even what? Understand how you feel? No, I don’t.” Mercury had regained his composure, voice now an objective sort of calm like he’d never been affected to begin with, “There’ll be time to cry, later. Right now, you need to get to ground level. I’m gonna steal one of the airships. I’ll pick you up and then we’re getting out of here.” ___

____

____

“Why are you even bothering?!” Emerald growled as she curled her hands into tight fists. The anger didn’t last and she found her body go limp, “Why not just leave without me?”

_“Because we’ll survive a hell of a lot longer together than we would apart. We’re wanted criminals now and life’s gonna get real difficult, real fast. Now get out of that vault.” ___

____

____

“You are such an asshole,” she gasped as she got to her feet. A few deep breaths later, her sense came back to her. He was right. With Cinder gone, they were in danger like never before. Even though she was loathe to admit it, Mercury was the closest thing she had to family now.


	3. The Greatest Trick: Torchwick

Roman Torchwick was no stranger to the prison scene. Being a career criminal meant clashing with law enforcement on a regular basis and everyone got unlucky at some point or another. Roman never considered himself a lucky guy to begin with. If we were being honest, he could probably start up a blog dedicated to reviewing the cell he had been lounging in for the past month.

_This Atlas built single bed is all the rage for newly acquired enemies of the state. While a bit cramped, the space is clean and comfortable with that futuristic Atlesian aesthetic. Meals are delivered on a tight schedule, as are interrogations. I felt so special, because General Ironwood himself always managed to take time out of his busy schedule to come and see me. Mind you, I didn’t see all that many other people. If you’re looking to socialize, this is not the restraining facility for you. For a people person, I would personally suggest this nice little spot in Vacuo called The Pit of Despair. Very active community with lots of exciting ways to spend that life sentence they love to dish out over there. That’s another review entirely, though. Next, let’s discuss the general conduct of the guards. Some guards are great. Others just feel like cold, emotionless machines. Probably because they’re robots, but that’s not really an excuse with I’ve already met an android girl who could probably out-adorable Neo if she really tried. The least they could do is program these knights to say knight-inspired stuff, but— ___

__His internal monologue was cut short when the door to his cell began to open. Striking a dignified, yet antagonizing, pose in case his old buddy James had come for another visit, he was quite taken aback by the space in front of his cell to be to be filled by an extremely diminutive girl with black pigtails and green eyes. It barely took Roman half a second to recognize that confident smirk._ _

__“New form isn’t bad, Neo,” he greeted his favorite little sidekick, before being taken by complete surprise when she dove forward and gave him a strong hug. “Heh… I’m glad to see you too, kiddo,” he assured her as he gave the girl a soft pat on the back, “There are security cameras everywhere, though. Can’t ruin our rep by getting all mushy in the middle of a jailbreak, now can we?”_ _

__Reluctantly, Neo (or rather Mint) pulled away from her partner in crime and produced her scroll, panic now commanding her expression as she replayed the video Cinder’s scroll had sent her ten minutes ago. As it went on, Torchwick’s face turned from amused, to shocked, to completely amazed._ _

__“Red managed to pull that off? I don’t believe it…” Roman remembered each time he had run into that little girl playing super hero. This wasn’t anything near how he had her pegged. Sure, the kid was an outstanding fighter—could probably beat him if he was having a bad day. Beating— no, killing Cinder Fall was another world entirely. Yet, there was the evidence. Cinder was dead and he— wait… Cinder was dead. A wide grin broke onto the criminal's face as he breathed out a small chuckle, “I think our luck just changed.”_ _

__His beloved sidekick quirked her eyebrow in confusion, clearly surprised by Roman’s lack of terror at his boss being killed and all her plans being foiled by some teenager in a cape._ _

__“Look, why did we get involved with Cinder in the first place?” he asked her simply._ _

__Neo responded by turning her eye color a radiant gold with a noticeable glint coming off the left one._ _

__“Exactly. We were expecting a score we could retire on. Now, what kept us working for her in the end, after we realized she was completely insane?”_ _

__This time, the minute woman whited her eyes out entirely and drew her thumb across her throat in an over-dramatic spectacle._ _

__“Bingo. But now, that looming death threat is gone and we’re free to pick a more… stable career path,” the smirk on the master criminal’s face grew with each word. Only after finishing his statement did he finally choose to rise and exit his holding area, “First thing’s first, we’re getting out of here and we’re heading for the nearest bar. I haven’t had a drink in ages.”_ _


	4. The Greatest Trick: Blake

Blake really had to admit how much she had grown to dislike being knocked unconscious over the course of their crime fighting careers. It was likely comparable to that of a hangover, not that she would ever admit to any underage drinking that might give her insight to that experience. What made it worse was the usual lack of a comfortable surface to lay on when they came to. Train floors and asphalt were not the first sensation you wanted to wake up to. In this case, the less than sanitary floor of the public airship Blake stirred awake on was probably the second most unpleasant thing she’d experienced that evening. Realizing where she was, she bolted to her feet in a panic, only to notice her fellow passengers doing the same. To her left, Weiss stumbled to her knees and gave her probably very sore head a delicate rub. To her right, Yang already stood fairly alert and turned toward one of the windows within the shuttle.

“You’re okay!” Blake exclaimed as she turned to address her partner, noticing two things as she did. First, Yang made no move to acknowledge her presence and, second, Yang’s hair was roughly a quarter of the length it had been the last time she had seen it. It was actually above her shoulders, now. On the grand list of things Blake never expected to see, that ranked just above Ruby having a salad for lunch. Speaking of which-

“Where’s Ruby?” Weiss asked the question they both had on their minds. Her voice was a little shaky, it was clear she was worried about her partner’s well being. After what they’d last seen of JNPR, she couldn’t blame her.

Yang didn’t respond. She just kept staring out at Amity, her grip tightening on the railing she had been clutching. That was not in any way what Weiss or Blake wanted to see.

“Yang, what happened?” Blake took her turn in questioning their friend, “Is Ruby okay? Did you—”

Whatever inquiries that remained were cut short as Yang let out a deep growl and lashed out, shattering the window in front of her with a savage punch. Wind now raced through the cabin, roaring in their ears. Yang barely paid mind to it, or the lacerations that had formed on her fist. She just kept her eyes locked on Amity.

Finally, Blake realized the airship wasn’t the only thing moving. The coliseum was making its way slowly but sure past the city walls, where no doubt there was a legion of Grimm heading for the city after the major dip in morale. It was then Blake saw the massive vortex peeking out at the very tip of the stadium. The domed shield over the open roof must have been containing it at the moment, she thought absently as it grew thicker and more vicious, like some poor animal being harassed before it was thrown into the fighting pit. Something like that could’ve made a breach a hundred times worse than what her team had dealt with at Mountain Glenn.

As Blake witnessed the mounting disaster, a horrifying thought dawned on her. Was this something the stadium could always do?

Once Amity was over the walls, the straining shield fell away and the tornado was unleashed, sending out gusts strong enough to shake their ship. It must have been tearing through everything in its path, given the debris being flung into the sky. There were rocks and trees The disaster only lived for four minutes before it dissipated, leaving a deathly calm in its place. All those Grimm that had been stranded in the sky began to fall; a rain of soon-to-be corpses that would evaporate before sun up. Blake expected the stadium to make its way back over the wall and into safer air, but it never did. Instead, it grew smaller and smaller until it vanished over the moonlit horizon. She understood Yang’s silence, now. Ruby had stayed behind and she wasn’t coming back.


	5. Memoir Entry #1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right guys, so I totally forgot to start splicing these in between my greater chapter titles, but better late than never. These are meant to pop in between each change in titles and give a little extra context to the events of Volumes 1 to 3. I hope you enjoy them, they're pretty fun to write.

_ Um… hi? _

_ This is the start of my memoirs, I guess? _

_ I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I can’t sleep tonight so I might as well try this out while I can still think. _

_ Anyway, the reason I’m writing this is because Penny suggested I start recording my personal thoughts for future generations to study. Apparently, it was something General Ironwood made a habit of doing when he had time to spare. I thought it was a little egocentric, at the time, but Penny reminded me that I  _ **_was_ ** _ actively making history, so I might as well give the textbooks something interesting to transcribe. She’s sweet like that. _

_ I’m getting off topic, though. It’s been about five years since I stole Amity and left the kingdoms. I know what everyone wants to know: _

_ How did I do it? _

_ Why did I do it? _

_ To answer that, I have to go back years before the Vytal Tournament. Back before I was a skilled warrior and instead just a broken little girl, crying for my mommy. You see, everyone has a moment in time when they meet their rawest conviction. For me, it was when Summer Rose was declared KIA by the Huntsmen Association. I was young. It was probably what you would call a formative experience. The Grimm had taken something from me I could never replace and the hurt never really stopped. It was a constant as I was growing up. Eventually, I started realizing a bunch of other people were hurting just as bad or even worse than me because of the Grimm. I wanted to do something about that, but I was still just a child; too frail to be a conventional warrior. I wouldn’t get my taste of real power until my first Grimm kill under the wing of my Uncle Qrow and that was after years of training to become even decent with my weapon. _

_ I’m not really exaggerating when I say I never would have gotten where I am without my uncle. Being the best scythe user in the world meant he was the best possible choice to learn to fight under. Where I had trouble with learning the raw basics from other teachers, Uncle Qrow understood me so well and had so much patience that I was eventually picking up techniques meant to be taught to graduating students. Lots of people liked to call me a prodigy when it came to killing monsters, but I’m still not so sure it wasn’t my smelly old mentor who was the prodigy at teaching. Still, combat wasn’t all I learned from him, even if he assumed it was. _

_ As I was training with Uncle Qrow, I noticed how he would be called away for weeks at a time for these special missions he refused talk about. Secrets were always super interesting to me. Something worth hiding was usually something worth knowing, after all. So, I started looking into what he was doing, where he was going. I’d start with simple questions, really small hints that I could build on later. As I got better at hiding my curiosity, I got better at finding out more. By the end of my Freshman year at Signal, I’d connected enough dots to know my uncle was gathering information for one of the most influential men in Vale. _

_ Headmaster Ozpin of Beacon Academy. _

_ I’d already known a lot about him. He was practically an idol when it came to being a hunter. Learning he and Uncle Qrow were working together behind the scenes was like one of my craziest dreams coming true. They were fighting someone or something (it was honestly never clear from the times I bugged them) that threatened not just Vale, but all four kingdoms. As my Sophomore year went by, my uncle’s missions became more frequent, and when he was around I could tell he had some kind of new weight on him. I decided it was time to take my investigation to the next level and planted a bug in his weapon the next time he let me open it up for maintenance. _

_ The things he was investigating didn’t seem to make any sense, at first. Apparently, this mystery threat had been connected to the deaths of a several prominent hunters, an Atlesian programmer being abducted and never seen again, and the increased frequency of attacks on Schnee Dust Corporation cargo. It took me a few months to put everything together before I realized it was all for a single goal. Atlas was finishing testing on their new line of combat drones, set to deploy later in the year. Near the same time, Vale was set to host the Vytal Festival. _

_ Now, I’d been a weapons enthusiast for a really long time, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to come up with some really outlandish ideas involving hypothetical access to tons of equipment I would never actually get a hold of. One such idea was loading up Amity Coliseum with enough Dust to overclock its artificial biome systems. Doing so would mean having a gigantic movable sky fortress that could generate just about any natural disaster you could think of, from hurricanes to volcanic eruptions. The sheer destructive power would be enough to bring an entire kingdom to its knees. To be honest, just the thought of a weapon that big made  _ **_me_ ** _ pretty weak in the knees. _

…

_ That probably didn’t sound right. _

_ Anyway, the scheme was looking me dead in the face. The programmer would be coerced or bribed into coding an advanced virus designed to override the stadium’s security systems as well as take control of the Atlesian drone forces. The murder of the huntsmen was to build tension and unease among the kingdoms, all the better for General Ironwood to exercise his military influence by bringing along a whole fleet to the festival. And, of course, the Dust would be supplied via hijacking as many shipments of SDC product as possible. It was an insane scheme, one that could pose a serious threat to Vale. When I realized what was at stake, my first thought was to tell Ozpin everything I’d found out. Before I could, though, something stopped me. It was this little voice, telling me to let it play out. After all, stopping this early would only preserve the status quo. It seemed that was all hunters could do, I thought. I’d been okay with that before, since it would be my best chance to make a happy ending for someone. But now? With this amazing power within my gaze? Power enough to change the world? I knew I’d regret not seeing this to the end. _

_ I started investigating Dust robberies in the kingdom, with one name in particular popping up. Roman Torchwick. He was some kind of career criminal, a great fighter and a better thief, and he was currently in the city judging by the pattern I’d traced. To my luck, Dad, Yang, and I were going to be traveling to the mainland from Patch to celebrate Yang’s acceptance into Beacon. Something I’d realized early on was that, if I wanted to keep following this plot, I’d need to stay as close to the action as I could. That meant I’d need to accomplish the impossible and get into Beacon two years early. To figure out how, I had to look back on everything I knew about Ozpin. To get in I would have to exploit three things: his compassion for virtue, his respect for initiative, and his desperation to recruit as many potential allies as he could. _

_ It just so happened, I had the opportunity to hit all three when I learned that Roman Torchwick was planning on hiring some muscle from a man called Junior for a job. _

_ The first step was to learn when and where Torchwick was planning to strike. I was planning on planting a bug on one of the hired thugs, but that plan exploded with Yang the second she destroyed Junior’s club. I had no clue she was going to be there and, honestly, she nearly ruined everything for me in a single night. Torchwick vanished the moment the fighting started and all I could do was stand outside while I tried not to feel so jealous of Yang for having all the fun. I caught a lucky break when Junior came flying out the window and landed right at my feet and I stole his scroll when Yang wasn’t looking. It hadn’t taken too long to crack into it and find all the intel I needed of my target. _

_ The first real phase of my plan was about to begin and the first step was to find I nice corner to loiter in at a shop named From Dust ‘til Dawn. _


	6. Equal But Opposite: Ren

Of his bodily needs, sleep was Ren’s favorite to attend to. Whether it be a small catnap in the park or sleeping in on a Saturday, there was nothing quite like the sense of peace which came with his rest. Of course, when your partner was a literal energy conduit, such moments of bliss would always tragically be cut short by some outburst or another. How blessed he felt for having woken gradually. Up until a wave of pain spiked through his body and he remembered the events leading up to his slumber.

Sorting through his recall, Ren played back the intense battle his team fought against a single opponent. It was ridiculous how easily that girl had managed to keep up with all four of them simultaneously. His speed, Nora’s strength and Pyrrha’s skill all being expertly directed by Jaune’s tactics and yet this “Penny’s” defenses managed to account for each of them in every conceivable combination. Ren could picture vividly Storm Flowers’ shots bouncing ineffectively off a circle of levitating swords as he tried vainly to interfere with the physical manhandling Nora was being given in close quarters. This had persisted for several minutes until Pyrrha discovered the girl they were fighting had large supply of metal in her body. Even with the perfect semblance to counter such a threat, it took all Pyrrha’s focus to restrain her. They had limited time and Nora was in no shape to act swiftly, so it fell to Ren to land the deciding blow. Calling upon the talent he had for fine aura control, Ren had been channeling all he had into the palms of his hands. Victory was a mere strike away when it happened. A terrible sound, louder than anything he had ever heard, pushed him past the brink and turned his world black.

As the memory of that crack hit him, Ren bolted up to a sitting position of what he realized was not in his own bed. As his training compelled him to do, he scanned the room from left to right to get a bearing on where he was. First to meet his eyes were a pair of IVs, one attached to his own arm while the other was connected to a neck brace fitted and unconscious Pyrrha Nikos. At her bedside sat his fearless leader, looking more fearful by the second as Jaune took note of the sudden motion across from him. Judging by Jaune’s slowed response and disheveled appearance, it was clear to Ren that his teammate had not slept in some time.

Continuing the scan, Ren saw a mass of flora worthy of a small garden crowding the table on the far wall. Flowers of all types could be recognized. A vase filled with daffodils, a single lotus, a potted sunflower, and more he didn’t even have the names for. Apparently he had been out long enough to have accumulated well-wishers. That was a concerning thought. New questions formed from that revelation. What happened to Pyrrha? Had the White Fang been defeated? What was their purpose for being there to begin with? Where was Nora?

The last question was answered almost instantly with a glance to Ren’s right, where his partner was curled up in a folding chair, practically fetal in position and in a state of restless sleep. That explained why he hadn’t been woken up by his usual alarm. He felt a pang of guilt as he considered the scare she must have gone through. Why was he always getting hurt in front of her? Reluctantly, he reached for her, only to retract his hand as she suddenly stirred awake. Groggily, she opened her eyes and looked around, finally setting on the upright form of her partner. Expression changing from exhausted to ecstatic in what felt like a single frame, Nora pounced forward to wrap Ren in a tight hug.

Wincing slightly at the pressure to his wounds, Ren smiled regardless as he returned the embrace. “ ~~Nora, I~~ -” he paused. He’d formed the words in his head, but he hadn’t heard them leave his mouth as it moved. Had he lost his voice? His throat did feel a little dry. Maybe he just needed a drink. Nora, however, had apparently noticed something amiss and pulled away to face him. She mouthed his name, a questioning look in her eyes. Then, she began mouthing whole sentences to the point where he couldn’t keep up. What was she doing? “ ~~Why aren’t you talking?~~ ”

Ren stopped, revelation dawning on him. Come to think of it, everything had been eerily silent for what he imagined was a very busy hospital. Reaching up to his ears, he could feel the thick bandaging around each one. Oh. Oh no.

“ ~~Nora, what’s going on?~~ ” Ren called out to his partner, or, at least, he thought he had. He couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice so he couldn’t be sure he was saying anything. “ ~~Why can’t I hear you? Why can’t I hear me?!~~ ” Panic was taking root in him as the silence persisted. He had no idea when he started shaking, nor did he know when Jaune had placed a hand upon his shoulder to try and steady him. “ ~~Jaune!~~ ” he winced as, once again, he heard nothing of his own exclamation.

Jaune had a small frown on his face, as though this moment was one he had been dreading. Standing up, he walked over to the other side of the room, taking a hanging clipboard from its hook. Clicking a pen that, nevertheless, made no clicking noise, he scribbled down something in slow, tired strokes. When he was finished, he handed the board over to Ren as gently as he could.

_You and Pyrrha got hurt in the last fight. You’ve both been unconscious for three days. The doctors said you weren’t responding to sound. I’m so sorry. ___

__Those last three words hammered home that this was real. “ ~~No…~~ ” Ren looked over to Nora, the denial in his brain begging her to tell him this wasn’t happening. All she could offer was a confirming nod as she struggled to keep from crying. And like that, he began thrashing about as the shock took him. He was sure he had started yelling and the pain he felt said he was trying viciously to tear the bandages off his head. Before he could hurt himself any further, much smaller and stronger arms bound tightly around him, hugging him close so he couldn’t see the tears streaming down their owner’s face. His struggles weakened with each thrash, until all he had the energy to do was sob in his eternal silence. “ ~~I just want to hear you… I just want to hear you…~~ ”_ _


	7. Equal But Opposite: Blake

Pain, struggle, and even death were hardly strangers to Blake. She’d grown up on the streets, scrounging day by day for her own survival in her early years. Before that, she wasn’t sure. She knew she’d had parents at some point, but they were gone from her life too soon to be anything more than some shadowy blur in the corners of her oldest memories. She met Adam and the White Fang while she was prepubescent, learned to fight instead of scavenge, and witnessed a laundry list of horrible crimes committed against her people for nothing but having a few different body parts. Despair hadn’t been able to conquer her after Adam’s guidance. Not even when the path he was guiding her down became too dark for her to keep following. Yet, as she occupied this hospital, cramped to capacity with casualties her own movement was responsible for, she became acutely aware that guilt could still grip her with impunity.

Blake had made this visit to finally lay her eyes on the people she had failed to protect from her former allies. It had been extremely fortunate she was even allowed to leave her room, given Atlas’ stance toward Team RWBY in response to its leader’s history making act of grand theft. Blake was hardly a flight risk, but she was more than aware that she was being monitored at all times by some mundane looking Atlesian agent pointlessly blending into the backdrop wherever she went.

“Ren’s ears are healing up just fine, but they aren’t receiving any input,” Jaune informed her as they stood together outside the window to a hospital suite, gazing in at his team. “The doctors are guessing it has something to do with his semblance. He filters perception. I’ve seen him stop Nora’s stimulus to keep her from having a panic attack, before.”

“So, his semblance is going haywire and cutting off his own senses,” Blake narrowed her eyes as she completed the blond’s train of thought for him.

“Something like that. It’s still a fairly unknown concept, but it’s apparently pretty common around war zones,” Jaune continued grimly, scratching the patchy stubble he had gained from his extended stay in the ward. “Nora’s just happy he’s still alive. She’s gone through three notepads on doodles, jokes, and stories. Anything to lift his spirits. His responses are… mixed. Sometimes we might get a weak chuckle out of him, but most of the time he just sort of shuts down.”

“At least he’s got _some_ laughter in him,” Blake conceded as her eyes shifted to the sea of red hair in the neighboring bed. “She still hasn’t woken up?”

“Not once. Her brain is still active, at least. Doctors say all we can do is wait,” Jaune sighed as his gaze lingered on the strongest girl he had ever known, now so very frail. Closing his eyes, his hands clenched and relaxed before turning to face his visitor squarely, “Blake, where’s Ruby? Nora and I haven’t seen her visit once. She should be apologizing to Ren for what happened. Explaining to me why it happened.”

Blake was silent for a while, unsure of what she was supposed to say, next. She settled for the truth, “Ruby… isn’t here.”

Jaune’s expression was split somewhere between confusion and worry, “What are you talking about? She wasn’t on the death tolls, the last time I checked them. Did something happen?”

“As far as I know, she’s still alive. It’s just…” Blake let out a weary sigh as she lowered her voice in case there were any eavesdroppers, “There should be an official announcement any day. She’s not coming back to Beacon. Or Vale, for that matter.”

It hardly took a genius to put two and two together. “You’re telling me _she’s_ the one who took it?!” Jaune hissed as he tried desperately to process the shock and betrayal he was feeling. “That thing was a symbol of peace and cooperation between the four kingdoms and she just took it?! The hell was she thinking?!”

“Knowing Ruby? She probably thought she could use it to elevate her hunting to the next level. Not that I’m sure I ever knew what was going through her head,” Blake couldn’t help to keep to frown off of her face as she considered the one thing she had never expected to happen. The Ruby she knew had been a true optimist, always chasing the all-encompassing happy ending she believed really existed. The younger girl’s philosophies had played off of Blake’s own with a sort of lightened reflection. It was nice. Refreshing even. At least, that was what Blake had thought. Now, her leader was commanding an army at the helm of a super weapon. One she had apparently been plotting to take since before they had even met, if Yang was to be believed.

“The feeling’s pretty mutual, right now,” Jaune was practically growling. Blake wondered why Beacon was so rife with secrets. She hid her ethnicity behind a bow, Jaune sneaked in with false transcripts, and now the most naive girl in class was making them both look like rank amateurs. “Look, I need some time to mull this over. I won’t tell anyone before the announcement.”

“I understand. I should probably get going, anyway,” Blake turned to leave, “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say in a situation like this, but I guess I’ll stick with sorry.”

Jaune tensed up for a moment before responding, “You’re not the one who needs to apologize.”

Stepping out onto the distressingly crowded sidewalk outside Vale’s primary care facility, Blake took a few seconds to try and regulate her breathing before she lost control. Getting a firsthand taste of Ruby’s handiwork left Blake with the kind of pit in her stomach she’d only ever got when she thought about Adam. Again she joined a cause for good and again the morality of her own actions were thrown into question as her leader abandoned their principles for power. For love of god, how had she not seen this coming?! The fierce idealism, the colors, even the rose! Was she trapped in a loop? Would every decision lead her back to disaster? Was she paving her way to hell no matter what she did?

Thoughts consuming her, Blake continued to stand stock still only a few feet away from the bustling threshold. Doctors, nurses, staff, and visitors melted around her form as though she were a rock in a stream. No one bothered to rouse her from her reflection, all clearly having much more important things to do in the wake of this crisis. She should have as well; there was still a voice screaming in the back of her mind to do something, anything that could help someone.

A flash of gold caught her eyes as a new body collided with her, followed by a familiar sensation wrapping around her waist to keep her from falling over entirely. It was warm, comforting and she welcomed the brief escape it offered her. Adjusting her stance to regain her balance, Blake internally rejoiced at the sight of someone she knew she could open up to.

“Sun!” Blake’s face lit up as her mouth strained to escape from the frown it had been locked in for the past few days.

The young man gave a little smile as he bashfully uncoiled his tail from her midsection. “Oh, uh, hey. Didn’t see you there.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Blake felt her cheeks flushing in embarrassment at being caught off guard. The embarrassment was like a gateway to further self conscious thought as it dawned on her how terrible she must have looked. She could feel all the mats in her hair and the wrinkles in her clothes. Her teeth were fuzzy with the plaque she hadn’t had the energy to brush off her teeth that morning. Worst of all, she was probably sporting a set of dark circles under her eyes like what she’d had only a month ago. Ugh, this wasn’t how she wanted him to see her.

“Wish I’d known you were gonna be here. Otherwise I would’ve dressed to impress. Maybe found some gel,” that halfhearted attempt at humor was enough to rouse Blake’s awareness to Sun’s own appearance. He seemed just as much a mess as she was. The spikes of his golden hair were flattened at the left side of his head, likely due to some fitful side-sleeping. He’d forgone his open button up for a stained tee-shirt so wrinkled it would probably take a steamroller to straighten out. His normally vibrant blue eyes were dull and tired, though there seemed to be a ghost of their usual playfulness hiding behind the fatigue. His smile was the same as ever, though; cheeky, irreverent, and bright enough to light the way through some very hard times.

Blake’s analysis must have been taking more time than she thought, as Sun quirked an eyebrow at her staring and shifted his stance awkwardly, “So, you here to visit someone or...”

“I was checking on a couple classmates,” Blake wasn’t about to give names if she could avoid it, “How about you? I haven’t seen you since before the attack.”

“Oh… well, you know, just here to make sure Scar’s healing up.”

“Scarlet got hurt?” her tone was level, but his placating smile told her he had noticed something less stable in her expression.

“He’s all right, it’s nothing life threatening.”

The look of skeptical concern Blake shot his way must have been enough to make Sun reconsider such a vague assessment.

“He just… lost a few fingers in the fighting…”

And just like that, Blake was back in the horrid reality she had been trying to escape since she stepped outside. Scarlet was a sword user like her. Every digit mattered when it came to the finesse required for a proper grip. Prosthesis was probably an option, but even cutting edge cybernetics were prone to slight impulse delays at inopportune times and the constant upkeep would eat at his finances for the rest of his life. Sure, Atlas would likely claim to support everyone’s medical bills related to this event, but the odds were the counsel would stymie the funding for chronic patients within only a few short years just to save a few lien. It wouldn’t even effect their public image if the were subtle enough about it.

“That’s terrible,” Blake really hated how all she could seem to do was respond with the basic platitudes. There really was nothing she could do to fix any of what had gone wrong.

“I mean, yeah, but… we all knew the risks, right?” Sun jammed his hands into his pockets and gave a soft kick to some imaginary dirt.

“I… guess,” that wasn’t the sort of response Blake had expected. This was a major injury, one that would follow Scarlet his entire life. Sun was his leader. He needed to take this more seriously. Even Ruby would have—

Would have what? Helped out anyway she could? Grieved with her friends and let them know they weren’t alone? No, that was just the Ruby she thought she’d known. The real Ruby put two of her friends in the hospital, humiliated her older sister, and left her teammates holding the bag after months of manipulating them into acting against her competition.

Suddenly all that guilt and grief turned to the righteous fury she’d learned to channel in the White Fang. She wanted to track down her wayward leader, force her to look Blake in the eyes, and demand an explanation. It felt so good, so productive to feel that again. But, just as soon as the fire had lit up, she found herself stifling it. Her anger only ever got people hurt in the long run.

There were so many things Blake wanted to tell Sun. She wanted to rant and rave about every awful thing she’d seen in the last few days and how they made her feel like giving up on the world. She wanted to talk about how Weiss was in absurd denial over Ruby’s actions and how Yang was getting more obsessive by the day about fixing this whole mess. Most of all, she wanted to selfishly beg Sun to make her feel better the way he had when they’d first met. To tell him how important he’d been to her well being over the last few months and how lucky she had been to have met him when she did. To apologize for every barb, every glare, all the ways she would reflexively try to keep him at an arm’s length for the sake of her damn trust issues.

Instead, all she did was stifle. She just stood there; radiating some awkward silence any sane person would do well to break away from. Sun, astute as always, picked up on that silence quick as ever.

“Anyways I, um, I gotta get in there now-ish or the orderlies are gonna be hunting me in the halls in an hour,” Sun jerked his thumb toward the entrance in a move that was definitely trying to pass itself off as carefree, but just missed the mark.

“Oh, right,” Blake remembered visiting hours were coming to a close. “Give Scarlet my best. I’m not sure how much that’s worth anymore, but… you know.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. I can totally do that.”

As Sun made for the threshold, Blake could barely swallow with all the awkward tension that had been slowly seeding itself into the atmosphere throughout the conversation. It’d never been like this around him, even when she was coming clean about her history. Was it really so different, now?

With a swish of his tail as it barely avoided a pinch from the automatic doors, Sun was out of sight and Blake slumped in dejection. With a weary sigh, Blake decided it was a good a time as any to head back home. If she was lucky, she might find a little escape in one of her books before she tried to find sleep.

That was probably all she would have left, in the end.


	8. Equal But Opposite: Glynda

Glynda Goodwitch never realized what an awful sight the headmaster’s office was when one was trapped behind the headmaster’s desk. She had always thought Ozpin was just being his usual immature self whenever he made any attempt to shirk his responsibilities and vanish before all the paperwork was completed, usually meaning it was up to her to ensure he stayed on task. Now, though, escaping this clockwork cage was all Glynda wanted to do. She wanted to go outside, to see her students and personally confirm that they were all healthy and safe. She knew they weren’t, though, and there was nothing she could do about that. Of the 32 hunters in training that had perished in the attack on the coliseum, 14 hailed from Beacon. On top of that, over 60 students had been hospitalized, not all of whom were recovering smoothly. A few had been crippled in one way or another and some of them would be retiring from their careers before they really even started. Then there was the matter Team RWBY.

In all her years, Glynda did not think she would ever regret any decision as much as she did relenting to Professor Ozpin’s choice for Ruby Rose to attend Beacon two years early. She hadn’t liked the idea in the first place, though for far different reasons than were apparent at the moment. When she had met the girl she saw the wild, dangerously impulsive nature quite alike to Qrow or Taiyang in their youths. Ozpin saw differently. He saw the kind, nurturing spirit that reminded him so much of the Summer he missed every day. Neither of them considered that maybe she was the most similar to the member of STRQ she had never even met. Why would they? Raven had vanished well before Ruby had been born. They didn’t even share any blood. Yet, for whatever reason, the two had the same colors. She had never dared to question either the surviving members of STRQ on that subject for fear of dredging up old memories they wanted to simply forget.

As for the rest of the team? She could only do so much for those girls. Beacon was coming under scrutiny, James was on a warpath, and there were too few hours in a day to manage everything, even when Glynda had completely taken sleep out of the equation. At least she had come to a new understanding of why her predecessor loved his coffee so much. Not that she didn’t have an idea, before this. She was no stranger to long nights on and off campus. Huntresses were trained for that sort of thing. Still, the new weariness that came with the job of temporary headmistress weighed heavily on her mind.

Currently, she was writing letters of apology to the families of those students who fell in battle. She recognized each name off the list. Their fighting styles, their demeanors, some she had taken a greater interest in, some she had faith would have gone on to become virtuous protectors of the people. Every time she signed another apology, it felt like cold iron plunging into her chest. She was currently on letter #6; A second year boy by the name Cyprus Scarlet. He employed a morningstar that was hollowed to house elemental dust. Spectacular offensive capabilities, but Glynda had found his defenses lacking in sparring. Maybe, if she had devoted more time to correcting that, he could have survived. She had to shake herself quickly to oust such a thought. Ozpin once told her the only time for guilt was after there was nothing left to do with the day. She would need to keep that in mind, from now on.

Before Glynda could return to the task at hand, her focus was disrupted by the door opening. While she had no appointments for this time, another teacher dropping by to check up on her or deliver yet another token of bad news was hardly out of the question. Instead, however, she found the surprisingly confident figure of one of her first years stepping through the threshold. The young Mr. Arc looked considerably older than he had the very last week, his expression tired but driven as he made his way to a seat placed in front of the desk.

“Ms. Goodwitch,” Jaune greeted respectfully as he settled into his chair.

“Mr. Arc. This is something of a surprise,” Glynda responded earnestly. As far as she had been told, the young man had neglected to leave the hospital due to the condition of his team. If he was standing before her this afternoon, it must have meant something had changed.

“I came to tell you Pyrrha woke up, this morning.”

He certainly wasn’t interested in wasting time. Still, Glynda felt a small relief drift through her. One less young life was hanging in the balance. “That’s good news. How is she?”

“She’s not going to die,” Jaune responded bluntly, “But that’s where the good news ends. She suffered serious damage due to the shot from…” he tensed up, as though all he felt was slowing the processing in his mind, “Crescent Rose. Skull fracture, damaged vertebra, that kind of thing. They had to use metal implants to put everything back together.”

Glynda’s spirit was beginning to drop as quickly as it had risen, “I’m… very sorry to hear that.”

The young man shook his head tersely before speaking again, “That’s not the worst of it. Her semblance is going out of control like Ren’s and it’s putting strain on her implants. As soon as the doctors left, she tried to move a paperclip when I wasn’t looking. It put her in so much pain she almost passed out.”

“That’s very unfortunate,” the deputy headmistress could hear the hollowness in her own voice. She saw enough of the girl’s technique to realize how important her magnetism was in a battle. It was very unlikely she would ever win another tournament. It was uncertain whether she would still even be a capable huntress.

“I know what you’re thinking, right now. We just lost one of the greatest warriors in a generation to this attack,” Jaune leaned forward so his knees supported his elbows, “That’s why I’m here.”

“Mr. Arc, if you’re looking to take vengeance on Miss Rose—”

“I couldn’t care less what happens to Ruby, right now,” the boy cut in harshly. “All I care about is what happens to Pyrrha. I remember something was weighing on her around the time the finals began. It just so happens her change in attitude lines up perfectly with Professor Ozpin calling her into his office. When I asked Pyrrha what was wrong, all she would say was that she had an opportunity to reach her destiny. I want to know exactly what that means.”

Glynda was at a loss for words. Yet another student was meddling in secret affairs right in front of her. The only difference was he made no effort to hide it. “Mr. Arc, I assure you I have no idea what you could be referring to.”

No one would have thought the academy’s most unsual applicant could muster a glare so sharp. “You think I’d fall for that after everything that’s happened? You were Ozpin’s right hand. You wouldn’t have that position if he didn’t trust you.”

That lie certainly hadn’t worked. “That the headmaster trusted me does not mean I can speak of such things without permission,” she responded. “Please, leave this be. For your own sake.”

“You think I even care about my own sake, anymore?! Either tell me now or I swear I’ll find out on my own!” Jaune had to stop and collect himself before he started yelling at the woman who could crumple him up with little more than a flick of her finger. “Ma’am, my team is never going to be the same. I knew that before either of them woke up. I know Pyrrha isn’t going to get back to one hundred percent, no matter how hard she tries. If there’s _anything_ I can do to give her a better chance, I want to know about it. Please.”

It was official. These children were growing up far too quickly. Glynda observed her visitor in silence for a while. When she had witnessed Miss Nikos willingly partner with this boy in the Emerald Forest, she had no idea what the she saw in him. Now, though, it was becoming clearer. Still, wasn’t he of the same sort as Miss Rose? An ill-conceived long shot Ozpin had made in some vague hope of exploiting unconventional potential for the war he knew was coming. Would trusting this boy, who only a month ago she had regarded as the worst fighter she had ever been charged with training, lead to the same disaster the professor had courted with that girl?

The deputy headmistress raised a hand to rub her weary eyes. Maybe it was the conviction he was showing. Maybe it was how his desire to learn that which was denied to him reminded her of a certain someone else. Maybe it was the lack of any substantial rest. Regardless, she relented that it was her time to make the decisions.

“Mr. Arc, what is your favorite fairytale?”


	9. Equal But Opposite: Qrow

“Again.”

Bang!

Clash!

Counter!

“Again.”

Bang!

Clash!

Counter!

“Again.”

…

“I said, again!”

…

“Again!”

Smash!

“Ya know, anyone watching us right now wouldn’t have any problem thinking you really did just up and attack that kid during the finals,” Qrow quipped as he eyed what had once been a rack of training weights before his eldest niece made them the outlet for her rage-splosion.

Yang didn’t bother to make a retort, instead moving back to the center of the training ring and resetting her stance. “Just come at me again,” was all she had to say.

Slumping his shoulders in exasperation, the scythe master brandished his weapon once more, barrel pointed behind him as he readied the shot that would launch him forward.

Bang!

Just as he had, so many times before, the old teacher burst forward in a blur of motion. At the same time, he swung his weapon forward to meet the target in front of him.

Clash!

Just as she had, so many times before, the young girl raised her right forearm to guard, solidly making contact with the blade before it could harm her.

Counter!

The dance continued as it had, so many times before. Yang followed up with a left straight, narrowly dodged by Qrow leaning to his right and leaping backwards to regain a safe distance.

“Again.”

As the largely useless exercise persisted, Qrow had taken it upon himself to survey his niece through the lens of a combat instructor. Yang's stance, though agitated, was in great form. Her strikes, though forced, were sharp and powerful. Even when she was this upset, combat came as easy to her as breathing.

Tai would beam with pride about how easy it was to train his little dragon to fight. He could show Yang a new punching drill and she would pick it up in record time. They started live weapon sparring when she was 12, her aura already strong enough to safely practice. By the time she was accepted into Beacon, Qrow was certain she was twice the fighter Tai had been when the two had met in that same academy. It wasn't just combat, either. Academics, social groups, dancing, cooking, anything she bothered to put a small amount of time into learning she excelled in.  
Talented was the word Qrow was looking for. Yang was never short for talents.

The summation shifted Qrow's thoughts over to his own protege, now. Everything Yang had been, Ruby hadn't. Her skills were lacking at a young age. She had been clumsy, puny, sloppy. When she'd first come to Qrow, singing his praises and begging to be trained in his weapon of choice, it took everything he had to suppress the abject horror he felt at the thought of the damage she could do to herself with a scythe. He wasn't even allowed to teach that weapon style at Signal, instead he covered swordplay for the most part and letting his scythe mastery persist as just another secret of the tribe he used to call family. Still, she persisted like the brat she was and he relented, figuring it would be better to guide her and minimize the damage than let her kill herself trying to self teach.

Training Ruby had been like scaling a mountain. Her form would slip from over-correction. Lack of control over her semblance had her tripping on the blade, likely gutting herself if it hadn't been blunted. When she realized her arms lacked the strength to cut through a target on their own, she made her first attempt at engineering a means to account for the difference. The damn thing exploded in her hands and Qrow had caught hell from Tai for weeks.

It wasn't just that, though. Basic concepts in math, reading and writing, people, chores; all had been a slog up a steep slope that rarely seemed to relent. Everything was wrought with one difficulty or another.

Which made him all the more proud of her when she persisted anyway.

Where Yang had talents, Ruby had passions. Even in failure, she reveled in her lessons. She rushed into every engagement with glee. She stripped apart household appliances with manic delight to see how they worked, much to Tai's amusing chagrin. She got invested in stories about heroes battling monsters, reading along with her family until she was personally absorbing novels meant for teenagers and adults.

As her little triumphs built up, Ruby's potential started showing through. Her personally designed weapon suited her better than any Qrow had ever seen. She'd even applied the heavy recoil in conjunction with her sleight frame in ways Qrow had never considered. She had become a true scythe master, one of only a handful in the world who could claim that status. Then, when Qrow was sure he couldn't be any prouder of her, Ozpin personally accepted her into Beacon two years ahead of schedule. That was really the shock of all shocks.

Then to think Ruby Rose, the brat he’d changed diapers for, had gone and pulled a fast one on the entire kingdom and on _him_. Qrow would’ve been strutting like a peacock if it hadn’t reminded him of his sister.

“Again.”

“We’ve been doing this for the last hour. Take a break, kid.”

“No! Not until I’ve got this down,” came Yang’s stubborn reply as she ran both hands through her hair. Both parties cringed when those golden locks failed to even hit her shoulders as they settled. Yang had loved her hair almost as much as she had loved her sister. Irony was a real bitch, sometimes.

“Got it down?” Qrow repeated incredulously, “You’ve had this move down since you were fifteen. I remember back when you and Ru… when the two of you would spar until you were almost unconscious. You’ve never had an issue dealing with this technique.”

“That’s obviously not true, or else it wouldn’t just be the two of us here!”

Well, there was the real heart of the issue, right there. Qrow sat down cross-legged on the matt, patting the space beside him. To his relief, Yang gave in and sat down. “So. Are you finally gonna tell me exactly what happened up there?”

What happened up there. Everyone wanted to hear from the last person to speak with the mastermind before she made her stage exit, stage in tow. The school, the military, and certainly her family. Qrow could understand Yang’s reluctance to share in what she must have considered her greatest failure, but if she didn’t get it out it was just gonna keep festering.

Yang drew in a long breath before breaking their silence. “The first thing she did when I saw her was point her gun at me. Made me answer a dumb question from our childhood. Said it was to make sure I wasn’t an illusion or someone in disguise.”

“Heh. That’s pretty clever…” Qrow remarked before shutting up when he noticed the glare being directed at him. He really should’ve known better than to let something like that slip out at a time like this.

“Anyway, after I proved I was me she put Crescent Rose away. She didn’t turn to face me, though. Whatever she was doing on that computer was too important. She kept talking, explaining Cinder’s plan and what she was after, telling me how she would be able to stop it, you get the idea. It dawned on me pretty soon that she knew way more than she should have. When I pressed her about it, she told me she’d known all about this since before Beacon.

“I was mad. Really mad. Here was my little sister, the sweetest brat in the world who I could trust with anything. She’d lied to me, used me, all for some crazy scheme. Some big prize she decided was more important to her than her family and friends. Well, everyone except Penny.”

“The Atlas girl she took with her? What was their deal, anyway?”

“From what I could tell? The biggest case of puppy love I’d ever seen. You wouldn’t believe how mushy it could get when they were both in a room. I couldn’t wait for Dad to see how they acted, together. He would’ve thrown such a fit at Ruby falling in love before freshman year was even over.”

“Pretty sure I would’ve had a problem with it, too. The girl was around Ironwood all the time. Don’t know if I could stand having Jimmy for an in-law,” Qrow shuddered as he envisioned such a hellish scenario.

“Well, guess she found a better way to give Dad a panic attack. Anyway, we’d started yelling at each other pretty quick. This was different from our other fights, though. The stakes were so high. The insults were so serious. Then she… she brought up the old cabin. She’s _never_ done that, before.”

On reflex, Qrow flashed back to the event. It had been one of the most terrifying days of his life. Summer had just died, Tai had effectively shut down, and the girls were lacking in anyone sound enough to support them. Qrow had no issue stepping in to babysit, but there was always the matter of syncing schedules. Sometimes, the girls were alone in the house for a half hour or so. When he’d arrived for his turn to watch and the last two things he had left to live for were nowhere to be found, he truly wondered if the universe had branded his family an abomination. Soon after, he decided to hell with the universe. He just barely tracked them down in time. A second later and he would’ve had to explain to Tai what had happened. Thank God it never came to that.

“It was about then I decided talking wasn’t going to solve the problem. We drew on each other and she went for the dash. I was ready for her, I was! I just… When I looked at her, I didn’t see that Ruby. There was no blood on her hands, no weird look in her eyes, nothing. I just saw… I saw her how she was when we were little. Wide eyes, curious and excited. A branch in her hands shaped like your scythe, because she wanted to prove she was just like you,” tears were gathering in her eyes, though it was unclear if she’d noticed. “A little strawberry Band-Aid on her knee from when she fell trying to catch squirrels with Zwei. I saw my baby sister and I… I couldn’t bring myself to attack her… S-she was just so…” the tears were falling and Qrow wrapped her in a light embrace. Yang buried her face into his chest, something she hadn’t done since she was a child. “I-I can’t really remember much, after that. I think she must’ve snapped when I couldn’t put up a fight. Cut my hair to get me mad enough to hit back. I was just gone, though.”

“Yang,” Qrow began tenuously, “you know this isn’t your fault, right? I’m not blaming you for Ruby leaving and neither is your dad.”

“But _I’m_ blaming me!” she exclaimed as she pulled away to look at her uncle with bloodshot eyes. “I’m the big sister! It’s my job to keep her from making stupid decisions and getting hurt! I failed at that! Now, I need to fix this by bringing her back and to do that I need to get this down!”

Qrow was painfully empathetic to his niece’s situation. So long ago, when Raven had first abandoned the family they had made in STRQ, he spent weeks searching for any sign of her. In the time he spent consumed by the same fraternal guilt he was witnessing right now, he missed the earliest highlights of his family’s newest member. All those little things that meant nothing until you realized they were more important than anything. When Ruby came to be two years later, he knew better than to waste precious time hunting ghosts. If Raven wanted to be back, she would do so of her own volition.

“Believe me, I know exactly what you’re feeling, right now. But, Ruby’s made up her mind. Dragging her back by force won’t change that. Hell, it might just make her more certain. You’re young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Let the old men obsess over the past. I’ll get Glynda to pull Ironwood off your backs and you three can start moving on with your lives.”

It was a sweet sentiment, really. But two things could always be said about the Xiao Long family. They loved with every fiber of their being and they were too stubborn to forget the past.


	10. Equal But Opposite: Weiss

Despite the frosty nature of their outward appearances, the Schnee family were very passionate people. They would always prioritize the good of their loved ones over themselves when the situation was dire, even if it resulted in a loss for their other ambitions. Or, at least, that’s what Weiss desperately wanted to believe as she sat across from her elder sister, doing her best to keep from snapping at the absurd lack of helpfulness from one of Ironwood’s most trusted officers.

“Look, I understand how bad this looks, but there has to be something you can do,” Weiss asserted, on the brink of exasperation with Winter. The past few days had been taxing and stressful. She had barely survived the war zone Cinder Fall had created, only to learn her team was now in the cross hairs of the most powerful man in Atlas. Worse still, she didn’t have her leader to fall back on. Weiss suppressed the urge to sigh. How could Ruby hide so much and then leave her to deal with all of this? Didn’t she trust her? Weren’t they partners?

“I told you already, this is completely out of my hands,” Winter retorted as she pinched the bridge of her nose to ward away the irritation` . “This is a matter of state security. The general has made investigation his priority and he won’t be talked out of it.”

“But you’re his direct subordinate! Practically his second in command. If anyone can persuade him to stop this, it’s you.”

“And who says I should stop this?”

Weiss couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of her sister’s mouth, “You can’t be serious. You’re willing to allow him to come after my friends and I over something we had no part in?!”

“The General has every right to pursue any potential threats to the kingdoms, after what’s happened. We’re in a sinking ship right now. Every leak needs to be plugged.”

“Are you even listening to yourself?! This is a witch-hunt!”

“A witch-hunt, you say? Your friends have more than affiliation with Ruby Rose counting against them. Destruction of public property, vigilantism, conspiracy. Xiao Long is an obvious powder keg who’s been witnessed consorting with criminals in her off time. Belladonna is a White Fang with a direct association to radicalized leader Adam Taurus. Nothing more should need to be said. And you…”

“Me?” Weiss had to keep herself from gulping as Winter’s gaze narrowed.

“Did you think no one would notice the theft of sensitive information from the SDC? Information which was delivered right into the hands of an enemy of the state. You have no idea the mistakes you’ve made by throwing in with those degenerates, Weiss.”

“…Don’t.”

The elder Schnee quirked an eyebrow at her sibling’s threatening drop in tone. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t ever call them degenerates. Every one of them has proven themselves more a guardian to the kingdoms than any of your troops. Each of them, including Ruby, have been working to protect this kingdom and its people since the day I met them.”

“Your friend stole Atlas military property, turned a loyal asset into a traitor, and has now perverted the symbol of peace and unity between the kingdoms into a tool of destruction,” Winter’s voice was raising to the point she had to stop and collect herself before continuing, “I realize Ruby Rose meant a lot to you. Of all people, I can understand how an academy partner can change one’s life. You need to face facts, though. This girl is not who you thought she was. She used you for her own means and the only way to survive this is if you completely disown her.”

While friends knew how to build you up, family was adept at tearing you apart. Even if they weren’t aware they were doing it. That was one of the lessons Weiss had learned during her time at Beacon. She had to shut it out before she was pulled back in. She did not want to go back to the person she had been before she met her friends. Nothing was worse than that. “No,” she shook her head weakly as she averted her gaze to the table. “Ruby wouldn’t do this to me. There has to be something more going on.”

Winter looked at her little sister with a mixture of rage and pity. Clearly, she wasn’t going to make any headway. “If you can’t let her go, there’s nothing I can do to help you,” she stood up, turning her back and striding away, “You’ll have to find someone else to bail you out.”

Bail.

Heh.

The word brought Weiss back to the depressingly simple situation her team had been in just a week ago. Yang was looking at assault charges and she was going to need a good lawyer to get her through the ridiculous circus that trial was going to be. At the time, Weiss was considering whether or not those were desperate enough measures to contact her father and beg for access to his legal division. If anyone could get Yang through that storm, it would’ve been one of the most powerful figures in Atlas.

Wait.

Now alone, Weiss took out her scroll and brought up the contact screen simply labeled Father. She had no idea why she was hesitating to hit the call button, though. If the possibility of Yang going to jail for assault was desperate enough for her to consider this, all three of them being prosecuted for conspiracy to commit high treason was more than appropriate a circumstance. After taking a moment to breathe deeply, she tapped the command prompt and gingerly put the scroll to her ear.

_Ringing…_

_Ringing…_

_Ringing…_

He couldn’t seriously have been playing this game, could he?

_Ringing…._

_“Weiss. I was wondering when you would call.”_

“Father. It’s… good to hear your voice. I apologize if you tried to contact me, before. The Vale CCT had been compromised by a virus.”

_“Of course. I hadn’t considered the reason I have not spoken with you in months was because the CCT was offline all this time. How foolish of me.”_

Weiss had to suppress a growl before responding. She knew what she would be getting back into. If this would save her friends, she could bear the weight. “How much do you know about recent events?”

_“A terrorist leading the White Fang turned the Amity Coliseum into a weapon and tried to devastate Vale._ _Huntsmen and students allied to the kingdoms_ _stepped in to stop this; one Ruby Rose, partner to my youngest daughter, having information on the plot no one else was aware of. The stadium was evacuated on the orders of this girl and she used the weapon to de_ _vastate_ _the incoming Grimm_ _horde brought about by her own sister’s mass televised scandal_ _. However, once the battling was over, this_ _student_ _, so closely tied to you, decided to sale off with the prize as opposed to returning it like a good little hero.”_

“Then you know why I’m calling.”

_“Indeed. At this point, James is most likely out for blood with the loss of his favorite little science project as well as several thousand of his new drones. With the perpetrator nowhere in sight, he’s begun targeting those closest to her, starting with the team who aided her in acts of vigilantism, among other crimes. In other words, you’re looking for protection from the military authority in Atlas and I am the only one who can manage that. Hmph. While you’ve certainly done your best to show how much you don’t want me in your life, I have no desire to visit you behind bars, or worse, at a grave marker. I can pull some strings with the military to keep you out of his reach.”_

“Not just for myself, father. I want Yang and Blake to make it out of this, too.”

_“You what?!”_ the Schnee patriarch’s furious bark made Weiss hold the phone away from her ear in preparation for the oncoming tirade, _“Not only do you demand me to strain my relationship with the military to clean up your mess, but you expect the same for your decadent_ _teammates_ _?! You think a temperamental savage and a faunus extremist are worthy of a Schnee’s aid?!”_

“Speak of either of them in such a manner again and I will hang up,” Weiss’ voice turned ice cold, “They are innocent and deserve shelter from this attack. If you’re not willing to give them the same courtesy, I’ll be forced to decline any of your help and stay with them.”

A few seconds of tense breathing floated over the line before her father managed to seize a tenuous grip on his anger. _“I cannot do this without gaining something I want.”_

“And what is it you want?”

To Weiss’ surprise, her father let out a tired sigh. _“It’s time for you to come home, Weiss. As this last week has proven, Beacon is far from safe. Ozpin is nowhere to be found and I cannot keep you protected from across the sea. You have far more enemies than Ironwood, even if you may not notice it. If you return to Atlas and take a position in the company, though…”_

Of course it would come down to this. She had to admit, the terms were fairly acceptable. Her father was essentially offering what would most likely be a secure and handsomely paid job under the family company for the freedom of herself and those closest to her. No one could argue the generosity in such an arrangement. It was hardly like staying at Beacon was still on the table, anyway. She wasn’t sure if any of the combat academies would accept her either, at this point. Unfortunately, it also meant she would be forced back into direct contact with her father, giving him a greater opportunity to control her. Could she really continue to resist that for the rest of her life?

What would Ruby do? Even in the face of this insane plot, Weiss still felt like she understood her partner better than most. The girl wasn’t power hungry, she wasn’t cruel, she wasn’t even vain. Stupid, impulsive, and absurdly ambitious? Absolutely. But, Ruby’s ideals were real. They had to be. She wanted people to be happy and safe. She wanted to open up the world for humanity to explore. Everything she had done recently still lined up with all she had claimed to believe in, Weiss was sure of it. She supposed Ruby would make whatever sacrifice was necessary for the salvation of as many people as possible. This would accomplish that, right?

Weiss thought back to the trials she had faced over the course of her stay at Beacon. For the first time in her life, she was given the opportunity to apply the training she had endured so long to actually make a difference in the world. For the first time, she fought alongside friends she respected and admired. Could she bear letting that go?

_“I’m waiting for your answer, Weiss.”_


	11. Equal But Opposite: Ciel

The interrogation room of Atlas’ flagship was awkwardly silent as its two occupants made no move to speak. The girl in the blue beret stayed quiet due to being occupied with setting up the recording equipment and preparing her notepad. The boy in the equally blue hair merely kept his mouth shut for fear of saying something that would get him thrown into a cell.

“This is huntress Ciel Soleil at 5:46 PM, conducting the next round of questioning regarding the actions past and future of rogue huntress in training Ruby Rose. Please, speak your name,” the girl began as she looked straight across at her latest subject after checking her watch to confirm the time.

“Neptune Vasilias,” the boy responded meekly as his own eyes averted to the opaque glass to his left. Ciel surmised he was thinking about who might be watching at the other end. That was a natural response to being in the interrogation room from what she had seen while aiding her headmaster for the last several days.

“Could you please tell me when and where you first met Ruby Rose, Mr. Vasilias?” Ciel began professionally as she readied the pen in her hand for note taking.

“Around the start of the semester. Scarlet, Sage, and I had just gotten their as part of Beacon’s exchange program for the Vytal tournament.”

“What about your third teammate? Sun Wukong.”

“He’d already been there for a few weeks. It was the first time I’d seen him in over a month.”

“A month? I was under the impression Haven’s upcoming transfer students were still having normal classes at that point in time. Where was Mr. Wukong, then?”

The subject gulped a little, taking a second to straighten his story. “Sun mentioned how he wanted to visit his family in Vacuo before the tournament started up, since they couldn’t afford the trip to Vale to see him fight up close. So, he turned in enough work ahead of time to make sure he wouldn’t fail his courses and hopped on the first boat to Vacuo.”

“I see,” white stockings rubbed together as Ciel moved to cross her legs under the table, “You mention his family not being able to afford the trip to Vale. Yet he was able to make two trips, himself?”

“I, uh, didn’t say the first boat to Vacuo was a passenger ship…” Neptune admitted quietly as he began to sink into his seat.

“Ah,” Ciel’s sound of comprehension was reinforced by her scribbling a quick note. There was certainly potential for a lead there. She would have to apply the right pressure to verify it, though. “Does your friend often commit petty crimes like these?”

“I… Look. Sun might have fun breaking little rules, but he’s a good person and my best friend. He would never turn against the kingdoms.”

“Of course. Could you please explain how the two of you got involved in Team RWBY’s incursion against the White Fang in the middle of downtown Vale, then?” That was possibly the most important event in the investigation’s entire timeline, save the theft of Amity Colosseum. Not only was it when Team RWBY’s bold antics began to bleed into public perception, but also linked to nearly every party of interest in a single, neat timeline. Within the bounds of a single eight hour period, Team RWBY had been in direct contact with the White Fang, the SDC, Roman Torchwick, Junior Xiong, and even Polendina.

Polendina…

Ciel’s last mission had seemed so simple; just partner up with another girl for the tournament, make sure she got to her matches on time, and keep her out of trouble. Was the request odd? Certainly. She had no idea who Polendina was or why she was so important, but she was never one to question her orders. Especially not those originating from the headmaster himself.  And yet, she had failed in ways she hadn’t realized were possible and all she could think was how obvious it had all been in hindsight. She had identified Ruby Rose as a potentially subversive figure in Polendina’s social circle, she had all the data to put the potential betrayal together long before it happened. Yet, she’d missed it all.

Now, she had the absurd fortune of being recruited by the headmaster for a second chance she did not deserve. She would succeed.

“He just felt like helping his new friends! We didn’t know something like that was gonna happen! All we knew was they thought those guys were planning something bad and we figured we could help them out!” the defensive tone of his voice was born more from panic than anger as all of his anxieties must have reached their boiling point.

“Mr. Vasilias,” Ciel felt a pang of guilt when she saw him flinch at her harsher than intended reprimand. She wasn’t supposed to get like that on the job. Total rationality. Pulling back, she elected to shift to a softer tone to put her subject at ease, “Neptune. I am not looking to convict you of anything, at this point. I merely need you to answer these questions so we can gather the necessary data and get some idea where Ruby Rose has gone and what she might intend to do next. So, please, I would prefer it if you could stay calm, be honest, and, for the love of all that remains holy, just look at me.”

The subject took a slow, deep breath before turning his gaze up to meet his interrogator’s. Ciel softened her gaze to show him she meant no harm. Eye contact was something she had trouble with when she was younger, it always made her uncomfortable for some reason. Her father had helped her overcome that with practice, though. Over and over, he’d drilled her with questions and told her the answers wouldn’t count unless she was looking at his eyes. It had been an adequate form of training. Now, she could lock gazes with the fiercest huntsmen without a hint of expression.

“You have pretty eyes,” the subject let slip without thinking.

Those pretty eyes narrowed in minor annoyance.

“Right… Questions…”


	12. Equal But Opposite: Penny

Penny had never liked having her mind scanned. Sure, it was ultimately good for her in the long run to check for viruses and maintain her basic processes, but at the same time she could never quite get over the tingly feeling that would be left in the strangest corners of her brain. One such tingle just raced across her the leftmost portion of her frontal lobe equivalent, causing her to fidget in her seat. This clearly had not been missed by the other girl in the room, as an amused giggle filled the space to Penny’s immediate right.

“Penny, you have to stay still,” Ruby scolded playfully as she glanced over at the cable currently plugged into the base of the android girl’s head. “If you move too much you might jostle the data cord. That’s super bad for you.”

Despite the tingles, a smile crept onto Penny’s face. Though Ruby could not know it, she sounded almost exactly like Penny’s father. Perhaps a touch less formal in her vocabulary, but just as doting. It was a warming sort of realization which could only be ruined by another tingle racing through her.

“But Ruuuuubyyyyyyy,” Penny whined in a manner she had found effective against her father from time to time. “It tickles.”

“No buts,” came her tormentor’s stern reply as Ruby gave another expression identical to that of the elder Polendina. How was she so similar to a man she had never even met? “I was able to subvert Cinder’s commands into voluntary directives so you weren’t actually under her control, but I don’t want this virus in you any longer than it has to be. I don’t want Emerald or Mercury or…” Ruby paused to shudder a bit, “Roman Torchwick finding a way to control you. I don’t want anyone controlling you, really.”

That statement raised a question, now that Penny thought about it. “Why not just program me to be completely obedient to you? It would probably be simpler for your goals if you didn’t have to worry about my loyalty when planning your war against the Grimm.”

A horrified look crossed Ruby’s face for a few seconds, as though such an act was unthinkable. “Because you’re a person. You deserve to choose what you fight for. If I took that away from you, I’d be a monster.”

“Choose for myself…” That was both a welcoming notion and a frightening concept. But Ruby believed she could do it. That was enough for her. Then another tingle struck. “Can I choose to end the sweep, early?”

“Nice try,” Ruby giggled as she checked the progress bar on the screen behind them. “Besides, you’ve only got two minutes to go. I think you’re tough enough to make it that long.”

“Two minutes?” Penny balked with exasperated incredulity, as though ten more seconds would be unbearable.

Ruby, for her part, did seem to be taking Penny’s growing discomfort into serious consideration. She pondered for a few seconds, taking in all available data in a way Penny only ever saw when they were alone in Beacon. Finally, her thoughtful frown shifted into a reassuring smile.

“Here,” she offered as she took Penny’s hand in her own. “My dad would do this for me whenever we were at the doctor’s.”

Penny believed she’d heard something about that from one of the numerous uncles on her father’s research and development team. Parents would often provide physical intimacy to their children as a means of reassuring them when they were afraid. Penny could hardly say she was afraid, but she certainly welcomed the opportunity to take Ruby’s hand in her own. As she gained new senses during her development in Atlas, Penny had found herself craving a sort of closeness she could rarely get out of anyone who was not her father. Though leagues apart from the incredible diversity of an organic nervous system, the network of small pressure censors littered throughout her latex skin could at least provide her with those barest of essentials to feel somewhat connected to the world around her. Still, an echo of disappointment rang through her as she considered all the things about Ruby’s hands she didn’t know. Soft or rough, moist or dry, even hot or cold were concepts on the very edge of her understanding. As of her current body, they were nothing but a numbers on a HUD, fed by a myriad of different sensors woven into the brace on her neck.

As Penny recalled, immediately following their departure from Vale airspace Ruby had retired to the nearest stadium restroom and proceeded to scrub her hands for two hours, eight minutes, and thirty seven seconds, well after the blood from Cinder Fall had been washed away. Why she had done this was unclear and Penny had been too occupied with performing various necessary tasks to ensure the short and long term security of their operation. Being unable to detect any chapping or chafing through touch, Penny figured it might be better to simply ask Ruby if she had felt any of those symptoms in case she hadn’t noticed.

As Penny opened her mouth to pose the question, an electronic chime sounded off to interrupt her.

“All right, looks like you’re done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Ruby chirped happily as she went about disconnecting the data cable safely.

“I suppose,” Penny agreed with reluctance. She stood up, servos humming as she proceeded to stretch out her back to alleviate any stiffness from staying still for so long. “What else do we have to do, today?”

“Let’s see,” Ruby pondered. The pair exited the makeshift repair hub and began their walk to the command center down the hallway. “A squad of Knights need to be inspected for damage, our Dust intake for the week needs to be cataloged so we can get a better idea for when we’ll need to refuel, and we should check the news to see what the climate is like in Vale.”

“Of course,” Penny agreed readily. The command center stood before them with a lively glow radiating off the holographic map in the middle of the room. “What about our, um, guest that you had me make accommodations for?”

Ruby barely looked up from the map as she began scrolling through the massive landscapes available. “We can’t worry about that until we set up a way to communicate without being traced. Just keep an eye out and make sure nothing happens.”

That reminded Penny of something she had been meaning to ask for a while. “Ruby, I have a question.”

“What’s up?” her new partner responded absently as she kept her eyes on the maps.

“Well, I was wondering,” she started nervously, twiddling her fingers when she didn’t know what to do with her hands, “When we establish a communication method, I was hoping I could make contact with my father. I know I’m disobeying him by joining you, but I still want to let him know I’m doing all right.”

The scrolling stopped and Ruby’s expression turned dour. Eyes of conflicted silver rose to meet hopeful green as the ex-student struggled to find the right words, “I… I don’t know, Penny. The general has his hooks in deep with your dad.”

It was hard to say if Penny had ever been a child at any point, but her harsh, biting disappointment at the prospect of not getting too talk to her father certainly gave the impression of a far less developed maturity. “But he worries about me, so much. If I don’t tell him I’m okay, who knows how badly he might take my leaving.”

Looking up at Ruby with desperate eyes, Penny could notice the significant change in Ruby’s expression upon witnessing her devastation. Ruby averted her gaze for a few seconds, mouth curled into a small frown as she again began weighing out all the factors set out before her. There was something amusing about the way her eyes would shift and narrow with greater and greater intensity, to the point Penny had to stifle a giggle before she forgot herself entirely.

“Can we be sure he won’t betray us to Ironwood?” Ruby asked reluctantly.

“Ruby, he always said he was my father first and a scientist second,” Penny assured her partner with complete sincerity. No hiccup erupted from her lips, which told them both that it was the truth.

“All right then,” Ruby relented. “As soon as we get a system going, we’ll put in a call to your dad. I just hope he doesn’t hate me…”

The disappointment was replaced by excitement and gratitude in an instant and Penny found her arms moving on their own accord to encircle her generous new partner and draw her close. “Ohhhhhh thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!”

“P-Pen-ny… Can’t… breathe!” Ruby squeaked from where she had been mashed against Penny’s chest in an attempt to trigger as many sensors as possible.

“Oh, sorry!” the android loosened her grip but did not let go. “I’m sure you two will get along wonderfully! You would probably have all sorts of things to talk about since you both enjoy engineering! Oh, this is going to be excellent!”

“Well, glad you’re confident, at least,” Ruby groaned as she slowly pealed out of the embrace and recomposed herself. “Anyway, let’s get back to planning. There was something I wanted to show you.”

“Oh?”

Ruby used her newly freed hands to swipe through a few more maps until she came to what she wanted. It was a continent, green near the bottom but a near pitch black traveling upwards. Perhaps the most interesting part of this land mass was its resemblance to a dragon, in shape.

“Is that?” Penny began as her eyes widened. Everyone with a basic knowledge of geography knew that continent, as well as the menace surrounding it.

“This,” Ruby began as she put her hand under the image as though cradling it in her palm, “is our primary goal. The Grimm have been winning the long game for millennia, forcing humanity to hide behind walls as they cover the open land. We can’t expand, which means we can’t develop. This continent is the ultimate example of what the Grimm have managed to take from us,” she cracked an excited grin as the great black dragon reflected in her iris, “So, we’re gonna take it back. We’re gonna take everything back.”


	13. Equal But Opposite: Sun

A few months ago, if Sun had been told he would prefer traveling in a ship’s cargo hold over a state of the art Atlas airship, he would’ve accused his messenger of heavy bias to his Vacuon sensibilities. True, he wasn’t exactly the most formal guy in the world, but not even he would pass up a taste of the high life every once in a while. Yet, here he was; lounging on a soft, reasonably spacious seat in a climate controlled passenger cabin and all he could think was how depressing the entire atmosphere had managed to be in just the first hour of flight. It’s not like he could blame anyone, really. They’d all been through a lot. It would take a bit for everyone to bounce back from this.

But they would bounce back. Life goes on and all that.

Taking a second to stretch his arms over his head, Sun turned his head to survey his fellow passengers. This ship was headed for Mistral, so most of the occupants were his fellow Haven students. He could recognize a good number of them from classes, sparring, the cafeteria, etc. Team AERO was at the very rear of the cabin, looking healthy if not exactly happy. Good to see they had some luck.

Team KOBI was two rows behind him. Oran had bandages covering his left side, all the way up to the neck and down to maybe his ribs. Sun wasn’t sure, he was wearing a shirt over most of it. Io, seated on Oran’s right, was struggling to get comfortable in her two casts; one on her right arm and the other on her left leg. That was… less lucky, but no doubt something they’d both be able to heal from.

Team FLAX was seated three rows ahead of Sun. Fallo was staring forward like the back of his neighbor’s seat had  all the answers to the universe in its upholstery . Xanth was quietly sobbing as he found comfort in Azu’s arms, she herself looking haggard from to many sleepless nights. It was then that Sun realized Laurel was missing from their number.

Sun decided it was time to check up on his own team. To his left, Neptune was filling the aisle seat. His partner had been gabbing to Sun for the last twenty minutes about the Atlas girl who’d interrogated the two of them about the night they’d fought the White Fang with Blake and her team. Apparently she’d made an impression on him, or something. Sun couldn’t see how. The girl’s personality was about as dry as the desert he’d grown up in. That was Neptune, though. Always a sucker for a pretty girl. He’d probably forget about her in a week.

To Sun’s right, Sage occupied the other middle seat. He hadn’t said a word to Sun since he and Scarlet had found out about that late night escapade with Team RWBY. Sun supposed that was fair. He was the leader and he probably should’ve been keeping all his subordinates in the loop a bit more.  That said, h e wouldn’t have minded Sage being a little more mature about how he expressed his displeasure, but it’s not like it matter ed t hat much. He’d get over it eventually and  get back to ignoring Sun’s orders with more smiling than frowning .

To Sage’s right, gazing out the cabin window to the open blue sky they were sailing through, was Scarlet. Scarlet, unlike Sage, didn’t really seem to have any issues with Sun right now. Scarlet always was the sane one, after all. He knew how to keep Neptune on task even around a mass of girls, could convince Sun of when it was more practical to follow the rules than break them, and had Sage wrapped around his—

B y no command of his own, Sun’s vision shifted from Scarlet’s face to his sword hand braced against the seam of the  window. Like he’d found himself doing far more frequently than he would’ve like, he unconsciously counted the fingers. One thumb… one index… one middle… nothing else…

Sun tried to pry his eyes away as a myriad of unhealthy, unproductive thoughts began their march into the forefront of his mind. He had almost broken off when Scar made a twitch of discomfort he wished he didn’t understand. Scar had a habit of drumming his fingers when he was sitting still for too long. It was never a big deal, not too loud or annoying, but after what happened Sun would’ve paid any price to halt that tic for the sake of his team.

Every time, Scarlet would start to fall back into the rhythm. Every time there would only be three taps. Every time that unnatural pace would unsettle, sadden, and remind them of what was happening. Neptune was pretty good at keeping upbeat, but he’d always be thrown off when it started up and he found himself with nothing to say. Sage had been hyper aware of everything Scarlet was doing for the past couple weeks and he’d taken too lacing his fingers into Scarlet’s offhand (everything was still too fresh to hold the main hand) to try to reassure him. Sun was fine, off course. He knew it was going to be okay, that they’d all be all right eventually. Even if right now didn’t seem like the best it could possibly be. They were alive, they were relatively healthy, it was fine.

So what if Sage was mad at him over the Team RWBY thing? Sage had been mad at him plenty of times before. So what if Neptune was obsessed with this Atlas girl? He was only ever interested in the chase; never knew what to do if he’d actually caught one. So what if Scarlet was… He’d be okay… He’d… He’d adapt and overcome because he was decent and reliable and that wouldn’t change about him. So what if Sun couldn’t look Blake in the eye, anymore? So what if he’d gotten mad during that fight? He was still the same person he’d always been. Anything he felt or thought was just a temporary shift away from the norm. Eventually the wounds and the friendships and the thoughts would all heal up. Life goes on and whatnot.

Again, through no thought of his own, Sun glanced over at Team F_AX, noting the empty seat and the uninterrupted sobbing.

Life goes on.

Unless it didn’t.


	14. Equal But Opposite: Yang

Interrogation Room A was pretty far from any kind of heartwarming spectacle, well done police work, or even productive conversation. Manning the procedure personally, General Ironwood sat across from the fiery stonewall that was Yang Xiao Long. Winter Schnee, his most trusted officer, stood behind him at a rest, more than prepared to intervene on his behalf if called to do so. Not that it would make much difference. Yang wouldn’t have given them an inch even if she had one to spare.

“Let’s go over this, again,” James asserted as the subject glared at him with defiance. “Where is Ruby Rose? What is she planning to do with the Amity Coliseum? How is she avoiding detection? Tell me now and I’ll do my best to be lenient against you and the rest of your team when the time comes for a trial.”

“What part of ‘I don’t know’ is so hard for you to understand?” Yang retorted tiredly as the circle of questioning which she’d sat through for the last several days began yet again. “Ruby never told me a thing about this stupid plan. She never told any of us. The last time I saw her we got in a fight when I tried to stop her from leaving.”

“So you’ve told me, over and over,” the general turned his head slightly to acknowledge his lieutenant. “Schnee, could you please tell me where Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long place in Beacon’s combat rankings?”

“Of course, sir,” Winter affirmed as she looked over her scroll. “In terms of human to human combat, Ruby Rose ranks number nine out of all Beacon first years. Yang Xiao Long, on the other hand, ranks number two, behind only Pyrrha Nikos.”

“That’s quite the gap between the two of you,” Ironwood continued. “How is it that she managed to subdue you so efficiently when your win-loss ratio against her was three to one?”

“You tell me,” Yang ground out, doing her damnedest to avoid answering that question. “Maybe it has something to do with how she was able to beat Cinder Fall when you couldn’t even find the bitch.”

Before Winter could lash out in defense of her leader, the general gestured for her to stop. “And that raises still more questions. We reevaluated the footage taken during Miss Rose’s brief skirmish with Cinder Fall in the CCT and determined that there was a significant skill gap between the two of them, as well. Prodigy or not, the idea that your younger sister managed to subdue and kill such a dangerous opponent on her own is preposterous. Personally, I have a hypothesis to explain these lapses in reason.”

“Well, I’m just dying to hear it,” Yang slung back, derision coating every word.

“I think everything your team has told me about what happened to Cinder Fall is a lie. After Ruby Rose took control of Penny Polendina, your combined power was more than enough to end the threat. Afterwards, the three of you were sent back to Vale on the airships in the hopes of garnering sympathy and information for the next phase in Miss Rose’s scheme, whatever it may be. How does that sound?”

“You’re actually insane, aren’t you?” Yang already had enough of Ironwood the last few days. This just cemented how completely done she was with him. “That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard, especially considering what I’m dealing with right now. If we were working with Ruby why not just go with her? It’d definitely beat risking capital punishment for whatever information you think we can get her.”

“And yet, you _were_ working with her when the four of you started a vigilante crusade against the White Fang for reasons best described as vague. Tell me, what were you planning to accomplish by waging war against them?”

“We just wanted to do the right thing. We _did_ do the right thing. The police weren’t making any progress, _you_ weren’t making any progress, and we knew Torchwick was up to something bigger than just theft. So, rather than bother Professor Ozpin with things we couldn’t prove, rather than beg the grown-ups for permission, we acted on our own.”

“Which leads to the next question. Where is Ozpin? I find it hard to believe that the headmaster of Beacon vanishing into thin air and your sister’s theft of the stadium are purely coincidental.”

“Ugh, I’ve already told you. I have no idea! We never even saw him during the attack! We were too busy _trying to prevent the destruction of the city!_ Maybe you forgot, but thanks to the scam Cinder’s team ran on me, I was locked up for the entire first act! The surveillance uploaded to your ship should show exactly where I was the entire time if you’ve been doing your jobs right!” Yang’s frustration was boiling over. They both should have known there was no point to this questioning. The general would get his crucifixions and save public face. There was nothing Yang could do to defend herself anymore and she had made peace with that. So why did she have to sit through this idiotic charade that served no purpose but as a constant reminder of her failures as a huntress, and teammate, and a sister?

“Why don’t you just get this over with?” she whispered bitterly as her gaze sank to the table, only to immediately regret that impulse as she remembered all the pictures of her little sister Ironwood had tossed onto the platform.

Most of them were just Ruby as she knew her. Eyes sparkling with delight as she nibbled on a strawberry, nose scrunched up as she struggled to focus on a homework project, grin stretching across her face as she wrapped the whole team in her cloak. These were all images taken from WBY’s confiscated scrolls. Obviously, Atlas didn’t put much thought into respecting the privacy of potential traitors. It almost made Yang sick to consider how every personal thing she had ever put on that device had been poured over and analyzed by some random team of Atlas intelligence specialists. There were a few pictures that came from none of the girl’s scrolls, though. They came from Amity’s security feed before Ruby had taken her big prize off the grid. The blur of her figure as she sped past dead and injured civilians to reach her target. The single tear down her cheek as she leveled her rifle at an unsuspecting Team JNPR. The cold and calculating look in her eyes as she walked past Penny and entered her big fight with Cinder.

“It won’t end until we have what we need,” Ironwood responded neutrally. He eyed his suspect for a few seconds, weighing invisible numbers all around her before taking one last image from his jacket and placing it on top of all the others, face down. “It’s come to my attention that your sister isn’t the first of your family to turn her back on the kingdoms. I find this pattern to be very unsettling.”

No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t bring that up now. Yang took the corner of the print out timidly and flipped it face up. She couldn’t help the small gasp that escaped her lips as she stared into the crimson eyes of the woman who gave her life. This was not the picture of Team STRQ Qrow always kept on his person. It was just Raven, dressed in white for what might have been the only time in her life, leaning against the rails of some peaceful rooftop. According to Qrow, her dad had snagged that himself on their wedding day. A fleeting moment of serenity he wouldn’t realize was finite in quantity until it was too late.

“Tell me, Yang. What do you know about your mother?”

“This is _ **personal…”**_ Yang growled as she struggled to keep her eyes from matching those of the woman in the photo.

“Do you realize everything she has been responsible for? What she was capable of since before you were even born?”

“This has _ **nothing**_ to do with it.”her hands had started gripping the armrests of her seat without realizing it, the sturdy metal denting under the constant pressure.

“I’m not so sure. I knew both your mothers back in their youth. Would you believe me if I told you Ruby had just as much in common with Raven as she did with Summer? I wonder how that could be, if there was never any contact or blood shared between the two of them.”

“That’s not true. _ **You’re lying…”**_ the dark room became more alight as a yellow glow began radiating off her short curls.

“Maybe that’s why you’ve been trying so hard to find her. You want to know what happened. You want to learn from her.”

“Shut up, _ **shut up, SHUT UP!!!”**_ in an instant she rose from her seat and took the edge of the table in her hands. No amount of weight or fastening would have been enough to stop her as she tore that piece of furniture out of the floor and hurled it into the opaque window to her left. Winter had drawn her weapon in a flash, though Ironwood simply remained seated as though nothing unexpected had transpired. Burning pictures fell slowly to the ground all around them, like some sickening rain of damned recollections.

“I remember she had quite the temper, as well. You could learn from her about hiding grudges, though.”

“ _ **You don’t know ANYTHING about my family!”**_

“Stand down right now, Xiao Long!” Winter commanded as she leveled her saber with all the deadly authority it carried. Yang made no move to do so, however.

“ _ **I get why my uncle hates you so much. You think you’re right about everything and that makes you blind. That’s why you couldn’t see the threat right under your nose.”**_

“Which threat would that be? Cinder Fall, Raven Branwen, or Ruby Rose? True, maybe I didn’t see any of them before it was too late, but I’ve certainly noticed how each of them are connected to you,” a slight edge was doing its best to break through Ironwood’s professional demeanor, though his posture stayed impeccably unchanged.

“ _ **And what does that change? What does this even accomplish?!”**_ Yang was begging for the answer she already knew.

“That isn’t obvious?” the general stood up slowly, as though finally addressing his subject’s aggression and intending to meet it with full control. He had no worries if the girl became violent. She was unarmed, outnumbered, and trapped. Even if none of that was the case, she still had a long way to go before she was worthy of meeting a headmaster’s power. “If you won’t give me information on Amity or Ozpin, all that’s left for you to offer is your freedom to safeguard the kingdom’s security. It’s not much, but it will do well to appease the people and raise morale. Better morale, less Grimm, a safer public.”

“ _ **I… I…”**_ the young student was at a loss for words. There was nothing she could do to defend herself, anymore. Nothing to aim all her strength at. How long it had been since she felt so powerless. The scarlet faded from her eyes and the lively glow dissipated from her hair. “Just get it over with.”

“Yang Xiao Long, you’re under arrest for crimes against the kingdoms. You will be tried before the counsel, where a punishment suitable for your crimes will be dealt out to you. Unless you have anything else to add, Schnee will escort you to-”

Any further orders were interrupted as the door behind Yang slid open and she turned to see a pair of figures stepping into the room without so much as a request to do so. The first was an exceptionally tall man, several heads above the girl who stood next to him, clad in a gray suit with violet lining the collars and buttons. His hair of dark purple was kept neat and short in an unassuming cut and a pyramidal mustache stayed still above his neutrally set lips. The tinted spectacles on his nose shifted only slightly as his eyebrow just barely quirked at the awful mess he had walked in on. Behind this man Yang had never seen was a girl she had seen plenty of. Eyes of icy blue rolled from floor to ceiling in exasperation. Clearly, Weiss was not pleased, impressed, or surprised by the product of her teammate’s temper.

“Mr. Papaver?” Winter greeted with confusion present in her voice. Looking down, she realized her saber was still drawn and hastily stowed it with embarrassment. “I was under the impression you were in Mistral at my father’s request.”

“Hello Winter,” Mr. Papaver responded simply, no cracks visible in his demeanor as he retrieved the enlarged scroll from where it had been folded under his left arm. “Apologies for our interruption General Ironwood. I’ve come at the behest of Mr. Schnee to discuss a matter of importance.”

Ironwood’s posture made a shift as his role changed from interrogator to associate. “Lilat, it’s been some time,” he stepped past the now very quiet Yang as he made to face his guest. “If it were all the same to you, though, I’d prefer to finish this up before attending to a new piece of business.”

Mr. Papaver straightened his spectacles before handing over his scroll. “I don’t believe that will be necessary. The matter at hand is the one which Mr. Schnee has taken interest in.”

The general’s expression soured by the second as he read the request on the scroll. “You must be joking,” he just barely kept from growling as he handed back the device. “Your employer expects me to cease all action against the remaining members of Team RWBY, in spite of overwhelming evidence against them?”

“Overwhelming?” Weiss exclaimed with sharp ridicule. “General, you should know full well the-“

“Weiss please,” the taller man raised his hand to cut off the younger Schnee before she went off on a tirade. “There’s no need for argument at this time.”

“I beg to disagree!” Winter cut in as she strode to face her father’s trusted adviser. “All three of them have substantial charges leveled against them. The people deserve to see justice served to the guilty, especially in light of recent events.”

“Mr. Schnee is well aware of the situation,” Papaver assured the pair calmly. “However it was also Mr. Schnee’s wish that, should there be any resistance to this request, you be reminded his knowledge of certain affairs. Notably, those involving the origins and status of Miss Penny Polendina. Should these young women not be released, those secrets might find themselves leaked to the public via an anonymous source.”

“Father is really going to stoop to blackmail over this?” the elder Schnee hardly felt surprise at the new lows her family had been stooping to. Weiss’ criminal activity was bad enough, but had she truly gone back to their father and groveled for a bailout? So much for independence.

“Please Winter, you know I prefer the term leverage,” the tall man replied as he strode over to the young woman everyone had nearly forgotten about. “Miss Xiao Long if you would come with me, please. There are a number of things we need to discuss.”

Yang nodded blankly and moved to follow her unexpected savior out the door. Before they crossed the threshold, however, Ironwood thrust his arm in front of them with enough force to betray the sound of pumping hydraulics. “Do you really think this little bluff is going to be enough to make me surrender three enemies of the state? The SDC would suffer just as badly as I would should that information be leaked.”

“Oh?” golden eyes glinted behind the spectacles, seemingly out of some form of petty amusement. “I believe the public would be more focused on the government official developing infiltrators for use in civilian populations than the company who was forcibly coerced into supplying the Dust for the project. Don’t you agree?” Every second the arm stayed up, it seemed like more willpower was drained from it. Slowly, it dropped and Ironwood reluctantly stepped aside.

Papaver and Yang left the room swiftly, though Weiss stayed behind to match glares with her big sister. “Cheer up. This happened before you announced our trials,” she assured coldly as she turned to follow her companions. “You won’t lose that much face for letting us go.”


	15. Equal But Opposite: Ruby

_**As she had a** _ _**hundred** _ _**times before**_ _ **,** _ _**Ruby found herself** _ _**in the murky fog** _ _**she could remember** _ _**from** _ _**before her thoughts had any substance. Sparse** _ _**scenes** _ _**from infancy would drift in and out, a reminder of who she was before she was a real person. Then, the fog broke away and she became aware of everything around her. The soft cotton of the dress her mother had made for her. The cool metal of the wagon** _ _**her sister had placed her in** _ _**. The stark white teeth protruding from the pitch black maw, aching to sink into her. From that instant formed her first real thought.**_

_**Am I going to die?** _

_**Dread began to consume her as the teeth lurched in her direction, only for the rows to separate and turn to sickly ash. Behind them stood the silhouette of a man holding a large stick with a larger blade. Her infant memories identified him as 'uncle' as the vision faded away.** _

_**That moment, her first moment, came to her** _ _**often.** _ _**T** _ **he same every time. What came after, however, was always new.**

**As substance faded back in, Ruby** _**recognized** _ _**the crunch of snow under her feet and gazed out to see a field of monsters all bearing down on her. She'd remembered this fight. She had gone to pay respects to her mother the night she decided to embark on her plan. It was like a test from the world. Something to let her prove she was ready to fight for humanity. She drew her weapon, her true source of strength and means of making her mark, only to find it was just a branch with a curve on the end and she was just a little girl of six years. S** _ _**omething told her** _ _**this was the biggest branch she had been able to find, and yet it was clearly not enough for the sea of monsters in front of her, which had grown from the pack she’d slain on the cliff to a horde spanning a whole countryside. Every instinct in her body told her to flee as the rose petals that signified her semblance whirled around her, but she would never obey. She leaped forward to attack the nearest monster, but** _ _**the action was rendered futile as its jaws grew to consume her and she was plunged into darkness.**_

_**Ruby** _ _**sank deeper and deeper into** _ _**the hostile abyss, choking on the shadows as she struggled to get her bearings in a realm with no up, no down, nothing to center herself on.** _ _**Something brushed against** _ _**her shoulder and she whirled around to identify the source of the contact. Floating in that darkness with her was another girl. Her hair was like copper and freckles dotted her cheeks, arms, and legs. Her** _ _**torso and pelvis** _ _**were** _ _**clockwork; gears upon gears linked up and rotated in sync with one another up and down her middle in a poetry of mechanics.** _ _**Upon** _ _**her** _ _**automaton** _ _**breast was a healthy flesh and blood heart. It beat in rhythm with the** _ _**tur** _ **ning cogs, a perfect fusion of soul and steel.**

_**She was the most beautiful thing Ruby had ever seen.** _

_**The clockwork girl smiled at Ruby with a warmth that touched her very soul and offered a welcoming hand to the awestruck wa** _ _**yfarer** _ _**.** _ _**Ruby** _ _**reached out to take hold of her savior, only to find she was just out of reach. Desperately, she tried again only for the girl to drift further away. There was a resigned sadness in the girl’s eyes as Ruby tried over and over to reach her, as though she knew this would** _ _**come to pass. Ruby grew desperate, now truly feeling herself drowning in this abyss with the air right in front of her. The clockwork girl’s smile turned sad as she mouthed some wordless affection that would touch no ears. Then, smile never leaving her lips, the gears converged on the girl’s heart and tore it to shreds between their teeth.** _

_**The girl went limp and drifted into Ruby’s arms. The gears had gone still once the heart was gone. The weight of Ruby’s grief was so great it restored the concept of down to the abyss just so she could start plummeting. Her descent was so forceful it ripped the girl from her arms and sent her hurtling into the black.** _

_**The fall continued and something about landings began to tickle the edge of Ruby’s memories. A shiny, flint surface was rushing up to meet her and with all her might she contorted her body to make a feet first impact. It was only too late that she noticed the steel plates fastened to her boots. The instant she made contact with the jagged black floor, she saw a pair of sparks ripple from under her feet. The sparks grew into flames and the flames existed to consume their creator. Gold-in-white scorched her right leg as green-in-orange consumed her left, both racing to engulf her entirely for the damage she’d done. The fire touched all parts of her. Body, mind, and soul begged for release from the agony. As they climbed up to her chest, the colors began to fight among themselves for the honor of burning her, each must have thought they had the better claim. Ruby didn’t care which color won so long as it would just end. Her wish was denied, though. At the pinnacle of her misery she could feel a new fire growing within her own mind. It was hotter than all the others, almost beyond heat in its unparalleled intensity. The pressure behind her eyes built harder and harder and harder until, all at once, the dam finally broke and a mass of silver poured out of her gaze like a cleansing sun, dripping down her cheeks and dominating the other colors pooling over her heart.** _

_**Silver, gold, white, green, and orange folded in on each other over and over as Ruby’s skin turned to wax and then to charcoal in the overwhelming heat. She felt every lick, every ember, every cinder as her body crumbled to ash and the fires continued to war. There was no stopping the suffering, no numbing the pain. Instead, her mind was assaulted with a dawning realization.** _

_**This was hell.** _

_**This was hell.** _

_**This was hell.** _

_**This was hell.** _

_**This was what she made.** _

Ruby awoke with a start, wrestling against what she had thought were flames consuming her body, but in reality were the folds of her cloak. Her struggling halted when she realized this and she let out a shaky sigh. Another nightmare. That made five in a week. She wasn’t a stranger to night terrors like this (if anything they’d become a staple of nights in team RWBY’s dorm), but even at their worst they’d never been so frequent.

Slowly, Ruby sat up on the couch she had been using as a bed and absently glanced over the sky box she resided in. She hoped getting a real bed and a change of clothes would be enough to ward off the harrowing visions that had been haunting her since her first night in Amity, but somehow she doubted it would be as simple as getting a new sleep mask. Just another price she hadn’t considered when she planned everything out.

Just as Ruby was about to fall asleep again, a ray of sunlight assaulted her eyes and she let out an exasperated groan. The infernal light bringer just peeked over the horizon, shining through the windows with an intensity that would make rest impossible. So much for slipping back into a REM cycle. With that reprieve out of the question, she decided she might as well take a walk.

While certainly better off than it had been immediately following the attack, Amity had more than a few things in dire need of fixing up for the long run. Laser burns and bullet holes littered the hallway Ruby currently strolled through, along with the occasional bloodstain that had completely dried over time. Ruby tried very hard not to ponder whose blood it was. That thinking would only make things worse for her at the moment.

An Atlesian Knight greeted her on the way to her destination, its programming deciding on a tight salute. Appropriate, Ruby supposed. After all, she was their new commanding officer. At the moment, only a few dozen or so of the drones had been reactivated to perform guard duty. The others remained on standby in the lower areas until it would inevitably be time for combat deployment. If there was a single complaint Ruby had for the knights, it was how white really wasn’t her color. Maybe she could make a deal for some painting equipment later on. That would certainly help her keep busy.

After a few minutes of walking, Ruby paused just outside the arena’s entrance. She’d done her best to avoid this place since she’d taken over the stadium. The 10’x10’ block of ice currently being sustained by Amity’s biome technology was the reason why. She needed to face this now, though. Otherwise, sleep would never come to her. The first step was the slowest. Every step after that become progressively faster until she was finally upon her goal.

“Long time no see,” Ruby started up as she gazed into the icy prison that housed her most peculiar guest. “Sorry I haven’t come out to check up on you, but things have been pretty busy since we last met. Every day we’re getting closer to being fully operational. When we have everything ready? Things are finally going to start changing for humanity.

“Anyways, you’re probably wondering why I’m still keeping you. Well, you’ve always been fascinating to me since I first saw you. So powerful, so otherworldly, so outside of human thinking. I’m pretty sure you’re not even human. Whatever you are, though, I’ll bet your body holds all sorts of interesting secrets about the world outside the kingdoms.”

Her eyes flashed in pseudo delight as she placed her hand against the frozen side. Cold as ice, just as it was supposed to be. Cold enough to preserve a corpse until such a time as it would be dissected and traded away.

“How does it feel knowing the last thing you’ll ever do is help humanity expand its knowledge, Cinder?”


	16. Memoir Entry #2

_ I never would’ve thought the hardest part of thwarting Torchwick’s little heist was going to be making sure my dad didn’t know I was out late in Vale. I always have and always will love my dad, but for as long as I can remember he’s had this… issue when it comes to mine or Yang’s safety. He forgets all about how the two of us are warriors who’ve faced our fair share of danger and come out of it stronger than ever. I know he experienced the same things when he was on a team with our moms and Uncle Qrow (the stories we’d hear said a lot about how reckless they got), but it’s like he completely ignores his past and everything that made him who he is today. All because he wants to keep his little girls as innocent and pure as he can manage. Yang says he was a lot less paranoid when mom was still around. I can’t really remember, personally. _

_ All I remember from that far back is red. The red cloth of my hood, I think. My mom made it for me when I was a baby. Funny enough, it didn’t start red. The fabric is woven with a special blend of Dust that dyes the fabric in the color of the baby’s aura. The whole thing was sort of a Rose family tradition. Either way, I think I’ve talked enough about my abnormal family dynamic for right now. Anybody who’s reading this is only interested in how I got Amity, so I ought to get back to that story. _

_ So, after sneaking out of the hotel we were staying at (and trust me, that’s no small feat when your dad is an experienced huntsman who was responsible for keeping Qrow away from the bars) I made my way to this quaint little shop named From Dust ‘til Dawn. It was a nice place. Quality materials, good books, and even a magazine rack I could park myself in front of to wait for Torchwick and his posse to show up. Once one of them told me to put my hands up, it was show time. One defenestration, four unconscious goons, and a rooftop chase later and I had my first run in with Cinder Fall. _

_ Cinder… Now there was a fight to remember. I didn’t know her name at the time; that wouldn’t come until the start of my second quarter at Beacon. But, boy, did she leave an impression. It’s not every day you come across a crazy pyro lady who brushes off your sniper rounds like she’s swatting a few flies. To be completely honest, if Miss Goodwitch hadn’t shown up to haul my butt out from the metaphorical AND literal fire, I probably would have died that night. Just goes to show that long term planning doesn’t guarantee your own survival. Once they’d escaped, Goodwitch set her sights on me. I knew that I’d need to seem professional and sophisticated to secure her trust. _

_ I… asked her for an autograph. _

_ Don’t judge me, she was really cool! _

_ I found myself in an interrogation room after that. Goodwitch was giving me the sort of talking to I would only get when I had a sit down with Dad and Qrow at the same time. There was all this nagging about how my actions were extremely reckless and how I ought to receive some form of punishment for it, but, then there were those little things that said deep down she was proud of me for acting out the way I did. Before the lecture got out of hand, she introduced  _ **_him._ ** _ Headmaster Ozpin, my objective and greatest challenge of the night. He introduced himself with a plate of cookies, a few questions about how I learned to fight, and some weird comment about my eyes. In other words, he knew the quickest way to my heart. He likely already knew everything about me and Yang, if only because Uncle Qrow liked to brag about us after his status reports. Really, I had this feeling he worked with the entire Team STRQ back in the day. There were times throughout Beacon I wanted to ask him more about my mom and what sort of person she was before she had me. I never could, though. I’d risk giving away what I knew. _

_ Ozpin seemed interested when I told him how I wanted to be a huntress. So, I told him the truth. I wanted to help people. After all, this entire plan was about getting enough power to change the world for the better. I… might have geeked out a little when I got into my admiration of the hunter lifestyle. He seemed amused by what I had to say. Maybe even a little nostalgic. Did I remind him of my mom or my dad? Or maybe I reminded him of what he was like before he had the weight of the world put on his shoulders. I always felt like we had this sort of connection whenever we spoke. Like he understood why I was the way I was. Maybe he would’ve even understood why I chose to play the game as a rival party. That I never got to ask him is one of the biggest regrets of my life. _

_ Then, he asked me if I knew who he was. What a question. I knew exactly who he was. He was the man who commanded my uncle in secret to protect the world from something I still didn’t completely understand. He had a controlling stake in all four kingdoms and then some. He probably knew all sorts of secrets I couldn’t begin to understand. Not that I could say any of that. All I could say was he was Professor Ozpin, the Headmaster of Beacon. _

_ Finally, he asked me if I wanted to go to his school. I knew I’d hooked him when I told him the truth. _

_ More than anything. _


	17. Finding Your Feet: Yang

“Look, I’ve been really patient. Ya know, for me. Mostly because both of you scare me in vastly different ways. It’s not that I’m not grateful you saved me from life in an Atlas military prison, but would one of you _please_ tell me what just happened?”

“…I really scare you?”

Yang’s palm met her face at such a harsh velocity she was amazed her semblance hadn’t activated from it. “That’s really not my point, Weiss…”

“In exchange for the freedom of yourself and Miss Belladonna, Miss Schnee made an arrangement with her father,” Papaver explained as the trio strolled through the eerily vacant hallways of Beacon Academy. Classes were canceled until further notice and everyone who hadn’t left to mourn a tragedy or rejoice in not losing any loved ones were elsewhere in Vale, doing whatever they could to push on in the aftermath. “She would like to wait until we meet with Miss Belladonna before she goes into detail about it.”

“The only reason we didn’t already have Blake with us was because we knew General Ironwood was going after you first and we didn’t have time to find her. We needed to break up that interrogation before things went too far,” Weiss picked up where the older man had left off. “Considering you’d destroyed the room when we entered, I’d say we just barely got there in time.”

“I…” Yang’s outburst wore out as quickly as it started. “Yeah, you’re right. Ironwood was about to arrest me right before you walked in. Heh, saved by the bell, right?”

“Yang,” Weiss began, concern now lining her voice, “I know your temper can get volatile, sometimes, but seeing that was like seeing you attack Mercury in the tournament. What could have possibly happened to make you lash out like that?”

Yang didn’t respond right away, instead choosing to withdraw her newly reacquired scroll from her pocket. Upon activation, she was greeted by an old picture she had taken to staring at when she was feeling down. A beautiful woman with red hair and a white cloak, a bright smile gracing her pink lips and a playful glint in her silver eyes. In one arm, a little blonde girl, four years old, wearing an adult men’s tee shirt (her dad’s before she claimed it for nightwear) which went down past her feet like a nightgown. Her expression was more energetic than one would expect from a child who had been fast asleep only a few minutes prior. In the other arm, a toddler in a strawberry print onesie. Though she had been woken up by her big sister shortly before, the warmth of her mother’s arms had lulled her back to sleep before the picture had been taken by her daddy. Yang barely remembered any of this happening, herself. It was all just stories from Dad and Uncle Qrow. “He started talking about my mom.”

“You mean Summer Rose?” Weiss questioned. Clearly, Ruby had taken the time to explain the state of their family to her partner in much the same way Yang had with Blake. Though, apparently she neglected to mention how they were really half-sisters. Was that meant to be seen as a respect to Yang’s privacy, or just another deception her little sister had been cooking up on the side? Why was that becoming such a common thought process?

“No, my… real mom.” Using the word real felt wrong. Like Yang was disowning all the love and grief associated with the woman who had stayed to raise her. But a different word wasn’t coming to her, so she merely said the first thing that came to her mind.

“Real mom?”

“The last member of the now disbanded Team STRQ. Raven Branwen,” Mr. Papaver added simply, as though it were common knowledge.

Yang was perplexed as to how this total stranger was aware of what had been a closely guarded secret during her childhood. “How do you know any of that?”

“The Huntsmen play a major part in the status of Remnant’s economy through their great effect on morale, in addition to their individual power and lack of distinct affiliation making for potential assets or threats. The Schnee Dust Corporation has been examining notable hunters since well before my employment. In particular, STRQ was one of the most promising teams to ever graduate Beacon Academy, until Ms. Branwen’s disappearance seventeen years ago. Second only in that generation to Headmaster Ozpin’s own team. Unfortunately, both teams tragically fractured before their true potential could be realized.”

“Well, nice to know my family’s dysfunction was such valuable information,” Yang shot back bitterly. “Just forget it. The general was completely nuts with what he was talking about.”

Any further conversation quickly came to a halt as the wandering party crossed the threshold into Beacon’s near deserted library. As of the current moment, the only other occupant was a single girl in a black bow, seated at one of the center tables.

“Miss Belladonna,” Papaver greeted politely as the girls he had been traveling with seated themselves on Blake’s adjacent sides. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. My name is-”

“Lilat Papaver,” Blake cut in sharply as she closed the book she had been glancing through with an audible snap. “Personal adviser to President Schnee in all matters business. Exceptional skill sets include situational assessment, personnel management, negotiation, and public relations. Don’t worry, I know all about you and all you’ve done for your company.”

“Forthright and shrewd, just as Weiss described you,” the tall man didn’t miss a beat as he took the last seat, directly opposing the fierce young woman. “I surmised as much from your performance in the tournament. Though, I had noticed how naturally you took to operating through proxies from the shadows, as well.”

“Spare me the wordplay. Neither of us need to hide what we are, right now,” Blake shot back frigidly, as though even attempting to put on any façade of civility around this man would be far too strenuous for her to manage.

“To business it is, then,” Mr. Papaver never once lapsed in his controlled expression as he turned to Weiss with the most formal of posturing. “Miss Schnee, would you care to explain the situation at this time?”

“Of course,” Weiss responded with equal formality, before taking a breath and addressing her friends. “I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I was able to arrange a deal with my father to ensure our security from the Atlas Military and anyone else who wants us in prison.”

“What kind of deal are we talking about?” Blake hadn’t missed a beat, even in spite of hearing the promise that her freedom was going to remain intact.

“That’s… the bad news,” Weiss sighed, knowing in advance the extreme reaction it would incite in her teammates. “In exchange for our freedom, I’ll be returning to Atlas and taking a job at the Schnee Dust Corporation.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Are you stupid or something?”

You could always count on a Xiao Long to break an awkward silence into tiny pieces.

“Wow, Yang. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Well, it needed to be said! I thought going to Beacon was all about getting away from your family and striking out on your own. Now, you’re going back to Atlas to _work_ for him? Toxic environment, much?”

“I think life in prison is a bit more toxic than that. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Like this situation is any less of a prison for you?” Blake tagged in with the kind of efficiency you’d expect from a couple partners.

“Say what you want about gilded cages, Blake. At least I’ll have a better chance at making the world better than I would rotting inside some cell. So will you.”

“In fact,” Papaver began casually, “I’m quite sure Miss Schnee could persuade her father to grant the both of you employment appropriate to your exceptional skill sets. Public opinion will make your professional lives difficult for a number of years. It’s best to take every advantage presented to you in situations such as these.”

The only member of the trio who even considered the idea was Weiss. After all, she had realized saving Blake and Yang from Ironwood was only the end of one problem. They had nowhere to go, their paths to becoming official huntresses had been cut short. Law enforcement and military were unlikely to hire them, thanks to their ties to Ruby. Where did that leave a pair of outcasts who lived and died by the sword?

“I wouldn’t be opposed to bringing it-”

“No,” and there was Blake to swat the idea out of the air like some poor canary.

“Blake, he’s not wrong. This could be a real opportunity for-”

“Weiss, you’re my friend,” Blake assured with absolute sincerity. “You’ve shown me that there’s still hope for humans and faunas to find peace together, no matter the places of privilege they hail from. But, until the day you manage to take control of that company and right all its wrongs, I _refuse_ to even consider allying myself with the organization that has exploited so many innocent people for so long. I’m no White Fang. I haven’t been one for a long time. Still, that doesn’t change what the SDC has done.”

“I… suppose I should’ve expected as much. What about you, Yang?”

The blonde merely shook her head. “I don’t see corporate work agreeing with me all that well. Don’t know what I’ll do… Maybe just wander around for a bit.”

“You’re sure?” Weiss was begging for one of them to just swallow their pride and let her help them. She shouldn’t have been surprised by either response, though. If there was something all of Team RWBY had in common, it was agency. Accepting suspicius handouts was out of the question.

“Unfortunate,” Papaver mused. His glasses made a sinister glean as his head tipped forward. “The two of you would have made valuable assets alongside Miss Schnee. Perhaps another time…” the sentence hung in the air for a second or two, before the older man’s demeanor made a nonsensically abrupt shift towards much sunnier territory. “But, I suppose we should move on to other matters. If there’s anything at all the three of you need to take care of as a group, you’ll need to do it today. Weiss and I will be departing for Atlas in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this, the rewriting process is done and we're on to all new content. Thank you all for your patience as I took my time tweaking things.


	18. Finding Your Feet: Qrow

The office felt, well, off without its owner present for the meeting. Qrow wondered when he'd begun associating the groan of turning clockwork with the aroma of hours old coffee, but having the former without the latter was playing hell with his nerves in ways that almost seemed irrational. Then again, that might have had something to do with the company he was sharing as well.

Though she'd parked herself behind that desk for all matters involving the school, Glynda had elected to stand for this discussion. It seemed likely she felt unworthy of Ozpin's usual seat in the secret matters. Qrow could respect that, not that he'd let her know.

James, on the other hand...

"We should open with the most pressing matter at hand," Ironwood took the initiative and ran with it. Typical brass. "Autumn is missing along with her life support pod. Do we have any leads on who might have taken her?"

"Just barely," Qrow reported, fatigue coating his words as he thought back to the dozen examinations he'd given the vault. "We found some wire tampering in the elevator and what was left of a burner scroll on the floor. Oobleck recovered its data chip, told us it belonged to Emerald Sustrai, one of the girls on Cinder Fall's team. No idea why it was broken, though. No sign of a fight. Who knows? Maybe she just had a case of the butter fingers."

"That would put at least half of the Fall Maiden in Queen's possession, assuming Cinder Fall hadn't managed to pass her share of the power onto another conspirator," Glynda mused as she began swiping through her scroll to bring up files on the members of Cinder Fall's conspiracy and set them floating through the dark room in holographic form. 

"Possibly, but I'm not so sure," Qrow stuck a hand in his front pocket, growling a little when the flask he was in search for wasn't there. This whole conversation was gonna be all different sorts of aggravating and he needed something to take the edge off. "When I say we found a broken scroll and some wire tampering, I mean that was all we found. Not a trace of any forensic evidence to speak of. No hair, skin, blood, nothing. There weren't even any marks on the floor to suggest the life support array had done anything other than vanish into thin air."

"Her semblance, possibly?" Glynda suggested, likely thinking of how her own abilities could accomplish that kind of feat.

"Always a possibility, but I doubt it," Qrow sighed with relief as he tapped his breast pocket to find the drink he was dying for. He took it out and got in a good swig before continuing, "What we've got for personality profiles on any of Fall's associates don't lend themselves to a semblance applicable to this scenario." 

"Elaborate."

Qrow knew he was about to step on some toes, but it all needed to be said. "Those inclined to awaken a telekinetic semblance tend to be preoccupied with a desire for order, structure, and control. Teacher's pets, so to speak," he ignored pointed his associates shot his way as he continued his assessment, "The only one who possessed traits resembling that was Cinder Fall herself and we know by the glass shards I found by Autumn that extreme heat coincides with her abilities. There were no scorch marks or heat warping anywhere in the room, plus she was confirmed to be aboard Amity Coliseum for the majority of the window of theft. I'd say that adequately rules her out."

"But not her compatriots," James piped up, finally contributing something more to the discussion than orders. "It's not unheard of for a person to undergo a significant change in personality in the years following an unlocked semblance. I would go so far as to argue you yourself are an example of this."

"As is Oobleck and a number of other runners who went on to become huntsman," Qrow agreed reluctantly, not wanting to dwell on the headspace that had birthed his greatest weapon. "It still doesn't add up, considering what we know. In particular, given several reports by her opponents in the tournament, it seems likely that Sustrai's semblance allows her to manipulate the visual and auditory perceptions of her targets. Extremely rare, but restricted to the mind."

"I'm not sure how much we can trust those reports," Ironwood muttered, though not so quietly that his allies couldn't hear him.

"Why? Because my niece was one of them?" Qrow snapped. He was hardly in the mood for James' crap today, not after everything he'd pulled in pursuit of 'justice'.

"There's more than one reason to distrust her."

"Oh yeah? Well, in case you haven't forgotten, there's another couple students who've got nothing to do with this mess that say the exact same thing she did. Maybe you ought to use a little deductive reasoning and figure out if every teenage girl in Beacon is in on this."

"I'm not sure I care to hear that kind of tone from you, right now."

Qrow guffawed at the pathetic rebuke. "Is that right? Would you like to share your feelings with the rest of the class, Jimmy."

The general bristled with a blunted sort of annoyance, clearly looking to keep himself under control in a manner befitting his status. "I feel, with Ozpin missing, we're in dire need of a reevaluation of vulnerabilities in the Vale branch. Starting with you."

"James..." Goodwitch called out gently. She was probably hoping to stop any arguments before they started. Good luck with that.

"No Glynda. Let him speak his peace," Qrow narrowed his eyes on the man he'd been butting heads with for years. He felt no fear, no panic, no dread. James couldn't scare him on his worst day, not after the things he'd seen.

"It's obvious you were the leak that led to the Ruby Rose crisis. The girl was your protege, got hold of information you were privy to, got into Beacon Academy two years early on your recommendation-"

"Before you lay that one at my feet, I'll remind you it was Ozpin who hand picked her for enrollment, not me. I'll add that Glynda had been keeping an eye on her the entire year and you interrogated her after the break in at the CCT. Tell me, James, did you suspect anything while she was answering your questions and feeding you Intel on Mountain Glenn?"

"..."

"Didn't think so. Now, I don't want to hear you throwing that crap at me after you decided to blab the entire secret to a friggin' Schnee girl without consulting Ozpin, first."

"Winter is the most capable operative under my command. With events shaping up the way they were, I decided to act quickly and give us a new piece to work with. Maybe even a new maiden."

"That wasn't your call to make. You could've had a five minute conversation with Oz to get his blessing before making that step, but you decided to go over his head like you knew better. Because that's what this is really about, isn't it?"

Glynda wasn't saying anything to back him up, but she wasn't calling him out either. That was a good sign. If anything, she seemed to be holding herself back from agreeing with Qrow's accusation, probably to avoid hurting James. That was less good. She couldn't be so attached, anymore.

"What is it you're saying, Qrow?" A cold, hard glare worthy of his surname flashed across James' eyes. The sound of crushing leather and straining pistons emanated from his figure as his fists clenched with all their considerable strength.

"Same thing I was saying when I got here," Qrow took another swig from his flash before pocketing it, savoring the burn on his throat as the liquid calm started to pool in his stomach. "You've been out of line for months; pushing your boundaries with Oz until you bring a whole goddamn army to his doorstep, thinkin' that's gonna make everyone feel safer. You go behind his back with the council, thinkin' security's better left on your hands than his. Now he's vanished and you're trying to fill the void like you were his successor or something."

"Maybe I should be," his retort was level, but Qrow knew that big, stupid heart was bubbling just below the surface. Big, stupid hearts made big, stupid decisions. It couldn’t be him. "I've been an academy headmaster longer than Leo or Dora. I've built a safe kingdom the enemy couldn't dream of threatening.”

“Burgeoning military dictatorship. Something else Oz wasn’t happy with you doing.”

“We're entering war. We need someone strong and reliable if we want to protect the people."

“It’s a war that hinges on 99% of the population not knowing there’s a war! That’s why we’ve been keeping to the shadows for centuries! You dragging us into the light could be the final nail in humanity's coffin!”

“If you’re so concerned about keeping the peace, care to explain why you decided to incite a panic by provoking Schnee in public?”

“I…” dammit, how was he supposed to respond? That he’d assumed complete betrayal and, in some insane display of self-medicated logic, decided to cut the head off the snake by himself? That he’d seen a series of emerging patterns that wouldn’t make itself less apparent no matter how much he drank? They’d just try to get someone to watch him if they knew; interrupt the work only he was capable of. That was the least of their problems.

“It seems even you don’t have all the answers. If not me, who then? You?”

“Of course not, you idiot,” Qrow was a scout, consultant, teacher, and assassin. Leadership had never been his strong suit. There was a reason why Summer had been the one leading STRQ. She was always adept at keeping everyone working together, even as her teammates were butting heads in every conceivable combination. If she were here Qrow was sure it would’ve been her taking over Beacon in the wake of this mess. If only.

“Who, then? You haven’t offered an alternative.”

Guess it’s time. Qrow knew this would determine how things would operate for years to come. Before this meeting he’d given a lot of deliberation to who he needed to give his endorsement to and how. It was obvious to him who needed to take over until they found Oz, but it was a coin flip whether or not James would go along with it.

“She’s right here.”

Glynda somehow managed to stand straight than she already had been. Impressive for a woman of such immaculate posture. It seemed she wasn’t expecting Qrow of all people to throw in his lot with her under these circumstances. She wouldn’t make any rebuke until they were alone, but he knew she was unsure. To be fair, so was he. They didn’t exactly have the best options at the moment, though. Something was happening in Mistral that needed investigation, securing Vacuo was already a full time job that couldn’t be neglected, and then there was James…

“Glynda…”   
This was the moment of truth. What would win out? His affections for Glynda or his need for control?

Come on, Jimmy. Do the right thing.

“No. She doesn’t have the correct experience for the position.”

Dammit.

“Doesn’t have the correct experience?!” Qrow knew this was a possibility, but the bad roll didn’t make him any less irate. “She’s been at Oz’s right hand for years! She’ll be running Beacon like he was!”

“All the reason not to burden her with this as well. With the current state of Beacon, she could easily be overwhelmed.”

“You condescending, self righteous, son of a—”

“Then it seems a compromise is in order,” Glynda inserted forcefully. Qrow quieted immediately, knowing full well he needed to respect whatever she intended to do here. “You’ve made your distrust of our methods abundantly clear and I have no doubt an unwillful cooperation will only lead to friction between the kingdoms. Professor Ozpin is gone. Without him, the game has changed. We need to change with it.”

“What do you suggest?” Ironwood, for his part, was smart enough not to talk down to the woman who could twist him up into a cyborg pretzel when she was making an offer.

“That we transition to a more cell based structure. Each headmaster continues to handle affairs in their own kingdom. We share relevant information and keep up healthy relations. Other than that, we operate on our own.”

James paused for a moment, eyes shifting back and forth as he weighed the agreement in his mind. He closed his eyes, gave a reluctant sigh, and turned to face Glynda. “That’s… acceptable.”

“Good,” to Goodwitch’s credit, she was doing well to keep her composure. Certainly better than Qrow had been. “In that case, I’d see you and your forces return to Atlas within the week so you might attend to your kingdom.”

Never in his wildest dreams could Qrow have made James look like a kicked puppy so easily. He was starting to feel better about being under Glynda’s command already.

“I—”

“And since I doubt we’ll manage anything productive by continuing this meeting, I’d rather you both leave me to my work,” she punctuated this request by circling the desk and taking a seat. Her seat, now.

James didn’t know when to quit, though, “What about—”

“Of course, Professor,” Qrow cut in quick as he moved to open the office door, giving a sloppy wave to the exit in mock etiquette, “After you, General.”

James took a second to swallow his dejection, then passed through the doorway without a word. Qrow figured the poor boy must’ve been heartbroken, but he was a fool to not see something like that coming. Qrow gave a curt nod to the headmistress and moved to exit.

“Oh, and Qrow.”

He halted so immediately the door managed to smack him on the back as it tried to close.

“I’d like to have a word with you later.”

“Of course,” Qrow agreed uneasily.

“Good. Be back here in three hours. We have a lot to discuss.”

Why was he so happy to give himself a new boss?


	19. Finding Your Feet: Emerald

For most of her life, Emerald had been confined to all the shadier parts of Mistral. Alleyways, street corners, warehouses, and communes were the things she had mastered for the sake of her survival. It wasn’t until her fated encounter with Cinder that she found herself beyond the walls. Through her first real benefactor, Emerald had been brought into the larger world at a level of significance she had never dreamed she would achieve. She had been trained to hone her potential in ways she’d never considered, outfitted with real huntsmen weapons to replace the ones she had scavenged from junk, and given a purpose to a life that had been nothing but begging and scraping beforehand.

Now, she was back to square one. Well, square one except she had an international bounty on her head and a sociopathic manchild with world class assassin training joined at her hip. Square zero, really. Maybe square zero-point-five depending on how useful Mercury was being that day. Emerald was abashed, almost ashamed even, at how quickly she’d grown accustomed to three square meals and a warm bed under Beacon Academy’s roof.

It was a different matter entirely, surviving outside the kingdoms. Rich pushovers didn’t really exist out here. Wealth in general was considerably more complicated than the amount of lien they had in their purse. Weapons, food, clothing, supplies, etc. Things you could touch with your hands. Of course, anyone with anything decent probably had the power to keep hold of it. City style thievery just wasn’t an option.

That left Remnant’s most wanted in a difficult predicament. Even unaffiliated with the kingdoms, almost every settlement on every continent would have seen their faces and learned their names by now. If they tried to act as highwaymen, it would only be a matter of time before someone came along with the capacity to take them. Though Mercury would hate to admit it, they both knew their skills weren’t enough to deal with a whole squad of experienced huntsmen, much less the army that would likely be sent their way. Neither of them knew much about wilderness survival, aside from the basics Cinder had taught them in the process of tracking Amber Autumn; certainly not enough to live off the land long term.

They’d caught a lucky break finding a small cabin in the woods far south of Vale. There had only been a single occupant in it; an old man who was far less frail than appearances would suggest. He must have been an old huntsman, judging by the shift weapon he’d attacked them with when they entered. The thing used clockwork parts, something Mercury said was a lot more common several decades ago. He was tough, tough enough to put them on their toes with blade and bullet, but he was losing ground even before the heart attack killed him. Mercury had seemed almost disappointed, like he’d been robbed of a real conclusion. He’d gone off into the woods to kick a few trees and vent his frustrations right after and didn’t come back in for at least an hour.

Now, Emerald and Mercury were both lounging in the cramped kitchen, having just taken stock of the small and large game the old man had stored away. There was enough to feed them for a few weeks, maybe a month if properly rationed. That was fine, Emerald figured, but it was hardly a solution to all their problems. They needed resources, but where to go? Torchwick had vanished before they could make contact with him, not that they could trust that cockroach anyway. The White Fang were even less likely to help, if anything there were probably a number of disgruntled members looking to take their heads over how Amity had gone down. Then, there was Cinder’s employer… who they knew nothing about. Not even how to contact them. Cinder had promised to let them in on that batch of secrets with the success of their mission. Needless to say, that hadn’t happened.

So, where did that leave Emerald? Slouched on a splintery chair, carving random patterns into a wobbly table with the blade of her pistol. Nowhere to go but away from the authorities. Nothing to do but survive. Back before Cinder, that had been enough. Now, though? With no point to her continued existence it was hard to be pleased with any kind of situation she found herself in. She just wanted Cinder here to tell her what to do next, but that wasn’t possible anymore thanks to  _ her _ .

When not thinking of their next move to keep living, Emerald’s focus had been almost entirely allocated to the girl who’d taken away everything in a single night. Ruby Rose and her team had interfered with their business time and time again, though never in a way that seemed all that precise or effective. Really nothing more than a kid trying to play superhero out on the streets. That wasn’t uncommon, from what Emerald had learned from Cinder. Huntsmen in training were already physically powerful in a way that could make them a threat to lower level street crime and the like, so some of the more naive ones would try their hand at vigilantism. Upsetting Torchwick’s first Dust robbery, appearing at the docks, disrupting Torchwick’s arms demonstration to the White Fang, even crossing blades with Cinder at the CCT were all just written off as the overzealous do-gooding of an excited little girl.

Then she stumbled onto the operation in Mountain Glenn. That one was a clear sign they had to pay attention to. They framed up her older sister with Mercury’s injury to force a little attention on the team and figured that would keep her busy enough to not interfere with the big night. Emerald wasn’t sure that could’ve gone any worse.

Emerald felt especially responsible for the disaster that had been wrought. It had been her job to get close to Ruby, figure out what she knew and manipulate her for the plan. When she’d established the connection so easily, she figured it was because the girl was gullible and childish. She never considered she was getting played so thoroughly. Her incompetence cost them the coliseum, the mission, Cinder… all because of that ridiculous kid who shouldn’t have even been attending that school.

There was only one thing of value Emerald could offer Cinder at this point. The only way to begin to atone for her failure.

"I think we should kill the girl," Emerald announced, knowing this desire hardly needed to be verbalized.

"Oh?" Mercury quirked his eyebrow in mock intrigue. "That's a funny thing for you to say."

"And why's that?"

"Because you're not a killer, Emerald."

"You got me there," she conceded with a casual air. The blade on her gun made another scratch on the tabletop as she continued her doodle. "But you are."

Mercury snorted and kicked his feet up onto the table. "I am. What's your point?"

"Pretty simple, really. You've got all the skills to help. You even analyzed her fighting style at Beacon. We could do it together."

The usual cocky smirk was replaced with a deadpan frown. His eyes hardened. "I think you misunderstood. Why would I help you with this? The girl doesn't mean anything to me."

Emerald knew she was crossing into dangerous waters. She wasn't stupid enough ignore the pair of gun barrels pointed in her direction, even if the pose gave the illusion of casual relaxation. She could tell when Mercury was getting ready to kill someone. As much as Emerald didn’t want to admit to herself, she was rightfully scared of what this idiot was capable of. She would need to choose her words carefully to get the outcome she wanted. Painting a light smirk on her lips, she buried her fears before they could be seen and locked eyes with her partner to establish her own willpower.

"Because you want to kill her, too. Just not for the same reason I do."

Mercury's expression remained unchanged, aside from a slight narrowing of the eyes. That was good. He was just about set to take the bait.

"I just told you I don't care about her."

"Yeah, but you're curious about how she managed to kill Cinder." Emerald set her weapon on the table, making a statement by keeping it pointed away from him the entire time. She could’ve used a mirage and kept it trained on him, but that would take too much focus. He’d figure it out and kill her anyway. Not like an invisible gun would be enough to have the physical advantage.

Mercury was quiet, absorbed in the accusation he knew was accurate. Cinder had been a killer the likes of which he’d never seen before, Emerald was certain. The only example of an assassin he’d ever had in his life was an abusive drunk with nothing to show for all his skill. Then came Cinder and she was everything he wanted to be: powerful, feared, composed. For the woman who hunted and devoured power he’d never seen before to die at the hands of an amateur, Emerald knew, would be too dissatisfying for him to accept. He had to know what the girl was hiding.

“All right, I’ll bite. What do you want from me in particular?”

Emerald’s false smirk turned genuine. She had him. She leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table in anticipation for the real discussion, “I want you to get me ready for her.” 


	20. Finding Your Feet: Blake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, hope you're enjoying the story so far. I just wanted to let you know there's some new stuff that I've added retroactively. They're memoir entries by a future Ruby to separate story beats a little bit and add some context. Check out Chapters 5 and 16 if you want to read them.

Blake, Weiss, and Yang had decided one last meal between the three of them was in order before Weiss made her departure from the kingdom. Papaver, pompous bureaucrat he was, had suggested some classy five star restaurant that would leap to service for the name Schnee. They were uninterested, though. The team hadn’t set foot in high society while they had been working together and they had no memories to share in it. Instead, they’d elected to visit a simple noodle stand that had been one of their favorites whenever they found themselves off campus for the evening.

They’d found the place the night they fought Torchwick’s display piece for the White Fang rally. They were looking for Sun and Neptune after the fight and found them chowing down without a care in the world despite the heated battle they’d been so recently ejected from. The girls would’ve been a lot more upset about that discovery if they hadn’t been starving after the fight. They’d all cleaned their bowls aggressively, Yang and Ruby especially hard due to the high calorie drain from their semblances. When the two of them ordered thirds it turned into a competition between sisters to eat the most. Ruby had managed a significant lead with faster chewing, but Yang must have had a larger stomach. In the end, Yang had finished six bowls while Ruby was struggling to keep down four and a half. Weiss, disgusted by the entire display, was nonetheless dismayed at her partner’s defeat and did her best to tend to the ensuing nausea. Blake had been too distracted by their predicament with the White Fang to be as supportive of Yang as she should’ve been in her hour of victory. Still, even with the shroud of obsession all too present, that memory had been a sweet one.

The current moment was bittersweet at best. The food was still good, but the atmosphere was strained. The girls would eat, chat, and laugh together, desperate to make this last experience a good one, only to clam up the instant they remembered the one missing from their number. Ruby had always been good at making her presence known with a myriad of her signature noises. A high pitched battle cry let you know her location on the field, spurts of fitful muttering told you she was asleep in bed, the mild hum of concentration signaled her confoundment in her engineering. The absence of Ruby’s noises had haunted the remaining team members whenever they found themselves together, regardless of how infrequently that had been.

Blake wondered if Ruby was feeling the same kind of discomfort, wherever she was. Did she miss the sound of her team? Was she able to eat or sleep the same without the chorus of all those other signatures they provided as well? She had to, right? She’d always gushed about how gorgeous she found Weiss’ voice and loved to laugh with Yang over the dumbest jokes.

Did it even matter what Ruby was doing or what she thought, though? That was exactly the kind of thinking that was making their night so difficult. Besides, there were other issues that needed attention.

Looking down at her barely touched bowl, Blake found her concerns far too pressing to keep ignoring and decided to speak up, “Weiss, are you going to be okay in Atlas?”

Weiss, for her part, looked nothing more but perplexed by the question, “I don’t see why I wouldn’t be. Blake, it’s the start of a lucrative career. I even convinced my father I needed personal housing, so it’s not like I’ll be living with him. This is the best choice we can make, right now.”

“Are you sure about that? I know things about Papaver. Things he’s done or made others do.” 

“Oh, I’m sure you do. The man’s infamous. Dangerous as well. I had to deal with him to go to Beacon.”

“What do you mean?”

Weiss didn’t bother speaking, instead raising her chopsticks to point to the vertical, off-center scar running down her left eye.

“He’s the one who gave you that?! I thought that was from a training accident! Weiss, what are you thinking going back to this place? He’s probably making plans to mold you into the proper Schnee heiress by any means necessary.”

“Oh, I have no doubt about that. He’s tested me before, I know he’ll test me again. But I can handle him.”

“This is completely insane. Yang, help me out here.”

The hunched over lump of brown and yellow to Blake’s right seemed to be barely paying attention, instead scrutinizing the menu she had to have memorized by now to determine what she wanted for the next course of her meal. “She’s made her decision, Blake. Not like we were the ones who were good at getting her to do stuff.”

Blake was caught off guard at being outnumbered all the sudden. Her partner wasn’t one to give up on something that easily, yet her objections seem to have died out in a matter of hours. So much for back up, she supposed.

Opening her mouth to say something, but finding herself without the energy to keep arguing, Blake turned back to her bowl in some futile attempt at a few more bites of the meal she’d never had a problem finishing before.

The three young women continued their meal in relative silence before Weiss announced her desire to turn in for the night and stood to leave. Yang hoisted herself off her stool and gave Weiss a solid clap on the shoulder which she used to reel the smaller girl in for a bear hug and some well wishes. Weiss seemed ruffled but pleased upon her release, then turned to Blake for her second goodbye.

Blake regarded the pale girl in the fancy dress for a time. When they’d first met, Blake had only seen a prissy, privileged aristocrat profiting off the suffering of an already oppressed population. They hadn’t gotten along at all, posturing and arguing to the point of needing to be broken up in some cases. Yet, as the struggle continued, they’d begun to understand each other. Weiss was haughty, arrogant, and in serious denial about her own feelings, but also a brilliant fighter, a loyal ally, and an amusing person to be around. She was intelligent, driven, and above all else wanted to make the world better. Blake wasn’t sure exactly when she’d begun to care for Weiss as deeply as she did, but there was no denying the impact. As unlikely though it might have seemed, they found common ground where their respective backgrounds had not.

And now this heiress, this natural enemy to her people, was walking into purgatory for her sake.

In a sudden move neither of her friends had expected, Blake sprung forward and wrapped Weiss in a tight, almost desperate embrace. Weiss’ posture was tense at first, only to relax after a moment and return the gesture. Blake squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the gathering tears. She took a deep breath to collect herself before uttering a few words.

“Please be safe.”

Blake could feel a strange kind of shiver pass through her friend’s body before Weiss tightened her grip in a show of reassurance.

“I will. I promised I was going to make it better, right?”

“Right,” Blake squeezed out through a sniffle.

They stayed there for a bit; two very different girls who, nonetheless, thought the world of each other. The embrace had to end, though. They let good and Weiss straightened herself. She gave the two of them one last goodbye and set off to the hotel Papaver had bid her to stay in for the night. With that, Weiss Schnee would no longer be a fixture in Blake’s life.

After another half hour, the two remaining girls decided it was their time to get home as well. The atmosphere was fairly nice, honestly. There was no one else in sight, be they car or pedestrian. A cool breeze was wafting down the road, giving the night air a pleasant chill. The only sound being the hum of the pale street lamps they walked under. Midway to the dorms, Yang’s pace slowed to a stop. Blake took notice and halted as well, looking to her partner to see what had happened.

“Hey, Blake?” Yang began awkwardly, “I’ve, uh, got something I wanted to talk to you about. Look, I… I know you don’t really have anywhere to go right now and, while I’m totally sure you could survive no problem by yourself, I just—I might… want you to be a little more comfortable than that and, well, my house has plenty of space and I’m sure my dad wouldn’t say no if I really bother him about it, so would you want to—”

“Are you asking me to come live with you?” Blake was surprised to say the least. Here, she had been weighing her options of going it alone. She thought maybe she’d head to Menagerie and experience some of her heritage. After all, she’d never been there before. It might be a good place to start over again.

Shoulders tensing, then sagging in what must have been embarrassment, Yang brought a hand up behind her head to give a bashful rub. “I just… A lot’s changing. After… you know… and now Weiss,” she let out a tense sigh, dropped her hand and looked forward with a sort of focus that seemed almost foreign to her features, “I’m not really ready to let you out of my life so soon.”

Whatever response Blake had prepared froze in her throat in the face of that proposition. The team had been close, certainly. Had things gone as intended, the four of them would have spent another three years eating, sleeping, and training together at least until they had earned their hunting licenses. Afterwards, it would have been more than likely the team would stay together and operate as professionals in the same manner so many other graduates had. When RWBY first formed, Blake had intended to keep her distance from the other girls for the sake of hiding her sordid past. Then, in the course of a weekend, it was out of the bag and everything was… fine. Great, in fact. She felt a new kinship she’d only ever felt surviving the streets with Adam. For whatever reason, she hadn’t thought that feeling had been mutual.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You could say yes,” Yang produced a crooked smile that gave an impression of fear more than hope. “It’s not like it has to be forever. Just until we find something.”

“We?”

Yang’s cheeks flushed a light scarlet upon recognizing the slip, “Or _you_ find something, of course. Not like you need to keep me around or anything if you don’t want to.”

“Oh no, I just—” now Blake could feel the blush creeping up onto her own face. Ugh, why was it always the sunny ones? “Are you sure your dad would be okay with this?”

“Trust me. With my dad, the fuller the house the better. I guarantee, if he’s never been mad enough to kick out my uncle, you’re gonna be just fine.”

Blake giggled for the first time since watching that stadium leave Beacon’s airspace, “I think I’ll still be on my best behavior, just in case.”

“So, is that a yes?” Yang was beaming at her now, as though she was finally letting herself feel all the anticipation she had been trying to ignore.

Was it a yes? It’s not like Blake could deny the appeal. She’d been the one to approach Yang in the forest, after all. She could’ve stayed concealed and waited for someone else, but the instant she saw Yang in combat she couldn’t help but initiate. If anything, this was probably the best she could ask for given the circumstances. Still, something was plaguing her. Was she intruding? Filling a space meant for a sister who wouldn’t be coming home? If this offer had come while Ruby was still with them, such worries would have been less rational. Now, though? Was it all right to simply take her partner up on this hospitality?

Blake took another look at Yang’s face. She looked happier than she had been in so long. No, Blake knew she wasn’t taking Ruby’s place. If she did this, she was being there for her partner like she was supposed to be. They’d help each other like they always had. That’s what they were taught to do, after all.

“Okay. Just… don’t make me share a bed with Zwei.”

Yang paused for a second, trying to process her partner’s answer. Her smile turned into a giggle. The giggle turned into a laugh. The laughter grew louder and more joyous by the second. Pretty soon, Blake was laughing along with her. Sounds of their shared amusement rose into the night air and rippled across the rooftops as tears began to form in their eyes. It was a sweet moment, one that washed away everything else that had happened. Even as their energy died down and the moment came to a close while they were eased back into the present, Blake found herself uncharacteristically optimistic about their future.

“I’ll try but—heh—no promises.”


	21. Finding Your Feet: Pyrrha

Deep breaths.

Eyes closed.

Reach out without moving.

Pyrrha hadn’t managed the time for an aura meditation since the start of the festival. It had been extremely busy, after all, with fun to be had, competition to exceed in, and a life altering choice laid at her feet.

Each breath, deep and slow, brought her closer to her center. Regulated breathing helped one focus and focus allowed one to control the aura. With each inhale she pooled aura into her chest and with each exhale she sent it circulating through her body. The glow warmed her muscles, eased her tension, reinforced her joints.

Without her eyes, she had to perceive through her aura. She could feel every scrap of metal in the room. There was all manner of nails, wiring, and tubing from within the walls. If she chose to, she could have torn them out as improvised weapons with little more than a delicate tap to send her pulse. Not that she would. Tearing up infrastructure of any kind was a terrible idea in the long run, unless there was someone like Professor Goodwitch present to undo that damage. Instead, her focus was on the sum of assorted trinkets staggered in front of her. It had taken a lot of patience and a little conniving, but she had managed to smuggle a fair haul from under Jaune's nose for the sake of her practice. There were thumbtacks, paperclips, even a fancy pen one of the nurses had lent to her in exchange for an autograph. Pyrrha wondered if that would end up being one of the last autographs she ever signed. It hardly mattered, though. She’d found the fame rather burdensome anyway. It was the other things she was scared of losing at the time.

Her aura began its usual work of separating the positives and the negatives, then pulsed out to grab hold of a paperclip. The clip lifted a few inches into the air, then made its way towards her open left palm. As it planted itself firmly against her skin, Pyrrha witnessed a flash of snow within her mind, followed by an unmistakable sensation of loss.

These flashes were common when using her semblance. A semblance was an emotional thing to use and emotions were what bound memories to one another. That was what Mr. Kheiron had told her, at least.

Mr. Kheiron…

The Nikos family had no legacy in combat. Pyrrha’s father was a local politician. Her mother was a marine biologist. When a very young Pyrrha came to them with an interest in fighting, they hadn’t a clue how to proceed. They enrolled her in self defense classes where she would obsessively practice until her teachers had nothing left to instruct her in. Soon, her thirst for knowledge and impatience with such basic training were in lockstep with one another. Worse still, she had begun neglecting all other activities in favor of the one thing she was best at. To her shame, Pyrrha had been quite the brat at that point in her life and was prone to throwing passive aggressive tantrums when she was bored.

Pyrrha pulsed out again, ignoring the ping she had detected from her neck and grabbing hold of a trio of thumbtacks. Instead of pulling them in, she chose to push them out. As they embedded themselves into the wall each one gave a solid thunk Pyrrha hoped wouldn't disturb the inhabitants of the neighboring room. With each thunk came another flash; a frosted shoreline, a set of hoof prints in the frozen earth, a broken bow.

Mr. Kheiron was a faunas huntsman who lived outside the limits of Argus. He had been a friend of Pyrrha’s mother after providing security during several of her outings to the coast. When he had learned of her parents' dilemma, he decided to pay Pyrrha a visit and assess her capabilities. He hadn't even bothered to watch her fight, finding the way she walked to hold all the answers he needed. After an introductory conversation in which Pyrrha was, regrettably, very impolite, Mr. Kheiron had decided to take her on as a student.

A third pulse raced to grasp the pen. It was heavier than what had come before, but that would have been nothing compared to the heft of Milo. Still, there was a strain to maintain perfect control; the sort that should not have been present for an object so small. The pen twitched on the floor, then lifted a measly inch before dropping. Another image, one of a dozen mouths full of gnashing fangs, settled in her mind's eye longer than the others had.

Training had progressed well over the years that followed. Mr. Kheiron had taught Pyrrha proper manners while schooling her in the spear and shield. By the time she was 11, she had been allowed to accompany him on his safer hunts so she might gain experience on the field. Pyrrha had loved those hunts. Far beyond just exercises in killing Grimm, they were an excuse to camp out away from civilization and enjoy the nature she had grown to appreciate. Mr. Kheiron would tell her stories with the night sky or introduce her to any number of local fauna and how they interacted with their habitat.

Pyrrha eased out a sigh to counter her frustration. She had done this hundreds, maybe thousands of times. It would not be beyond her today. She sent out another pulse, stronger this time, and ignored the tickle that brushed up against the based of he skull. The pen shot straight up, twice as high as it had gone last time. Again, she held her open palm out to receive it, only for her magnetic grip to falter once again and send to writing utensil clattering to the ground again. Like clockwork, a new image flashed. Small, empty, bloody hands held over a mangled brown mane.

The monster wasn’t supposed to be there. The land had been surveyed a few days prior and determined to be safe enough for Pyrrha’s mission. It must have been lurking beneath the shore, waiting for a chance at a decent meal. Larger Grimm were known to learn patience, after all. It must have had a dozen heads, though Pyrrha had been too terrified to count them. In an instant, her spear was lost from her grip. Mr. Kheiron had rushed in to defend her, his bow intercepting two heads while another clamped down on his free arm. He had shouted at Pyrrha to flee while the monster tore his aura open, but she was frozen with terror. The monster, rather than devour its prey then, chose to toss the mutilated corpse at Pyrrha’s feet. It was like… it wanted her to feel as much despair as possible before it killed her. It was working.

Desperation was beginning to overtake Pyrrha as she forced even more power into her polarity. Her aura had the pen in a vice grip, only it wasn't a pen anymore. It was Milo. Her first Milo. The one Mr. Kheiron had made for her. It was out of her hands and  _ it wasn't supposed to be.  _ Mr. Kheiron always told her to keep her weapon under her control and she was  _ failing him.  _ She needed Milo. She needed it to make Mr. Kheiron proud of her. Or else… or else, why did he die for her? Her head was pounding, the magnetic pulse resonating stronger and stronger as a seizing pain was racing through her spine. She didn't care, though. Milo was in her aura. She just had to call out and it would come back to her.

A new mantra, or an old one, wormed its way in as Pyrrha’s hand lay outstretched before her.

To me.

To me.

To me!

TO ME!

A moment, and then gratification. The shaft brushed against Pyrrha’s palm and her fingers curled to grip it on instinct. A weak small graced her lips as she felt her balance give out and she slumped onto her side in a heap. Her eyes cracked open long enough for her to notice Jaune entering the room in a panic before everything started turning dark. The pen slipped from her grasp and clattered to the floor once again. There was no flash to accompany it, though. Pyrrha was too far gone.


	22. Finding Your Feet: Weiss

Weiss had been fed up with corporate culture by the time she was thirteen years old. It was snobbish, pointless, utterly nepotistic, and, above all else, so monotonous as to bore her to tears. When she had made that deal to save her friends, those realities had been the furthest thing from her mind. No, all she had cared to think about was the proximity to her family and how that might affect her growth as a person. Never had she considered the job itself could be her biggest problem.

The job was simple. By all means, it was so abstract and nebulous that she was certain the company would proceed just fine if she were totally incompetent. It came with a desk too cramped for her to hide Myrtenaster in, though smuggling the sword in was hardly an option to begin with. Why would she need it, anyway? She wasn't likely to face any physical threats inside the building. Social threats seemed even less likely, given how no one in their right mind was about to start something with the CEO's daughter and current heir.

On her first day in the office, Weiss had been welcomed with forced smiles and pretty words all around. She hated it. Beacon, despite its surprising volume of hidden agendas and false identities, had still been an emotionally honest environment. Her teammates had never been reluctant to voice their dissatisfaction with her behavior, nor her teachers to challenge her preconceptions. It had taken her weeks to legitimately appreciate that, but as of now its absence was unbearable.

All of the strength Weiss had gained, all of the wisdom she had accumulated, it ripened on the vine as she toiled away at pointless busywork. She wasn't a drone, dammit! She was a huntress. She had fought monsters and terrorists. She had done her part to protect a kingdom when it came under threat. Yet, this was her new life. Worthless. Wasteful.

One particular evening, alike to so many others she’d had since her return to Atlas, Weiss was arriving at her apartment after another uneventful day. Even in this lavish space she had managed to carve out for herself, she found little comfort. The furniture, the appliances, and all those very expensive things lining the walls had been meticulously arranged by some interior designer Papaver probably hired. It was sleek, modern, and totally devoid of anything resembling a soul. It didn't matter the finery, the luxury, or the incredible view. Gilded or not, a cage was a cage.

What Weiss probably hated most was the bed. It was a lush, soft queen size. The sheets had a thread count in the hundreds and the frame was an immaculate white, but she would've traded them for that basic college twin at any opportunity. It was funny how an utter death trap hanging over her head every night had brought her so much comfort, but she really did miss it. Now, whenever Weiss stared at that blank ceiling, all she could think about was how, whenever Ruby got restless in her sleep, her semblance would activate for a split second and send a shower of rose petals around her in a surreal display. She always looked forward to that.

Now, Weiss had nothing to look forward to. No challenging work to bury herself into, no interest in rejoining the high class social circles, not even the passion for any kind of creative hobby like she used to. Each day she would go to work to be utterly babies. Each night she would return to her apartment with all its expensive comforts, lonely ambience, mysterious device on her coffee table—

What was that last one?

There, set crookedly on her hexagonal alabaster coffee table, was an object she had never seen before. One that was too simple and utilitarian to be anything provided to her by her family. It had a lifeless black screen on its upper half, an eggshell body, and a few red buttons on its lower half. It looked like a tome: the previous model of communication device before scrolls had outmoded them.

Abruptly, during Weiss's examination, it started playing a simple chime as the screen lit up. There was only a single letter where the name was meant to be displayed.

R.

Hesitantly, maybe even hopefully, Weiss reached out. She identified what was likely the answer button and gave it a push. The image on the screen morphed into that of a positively delighted young woman.

_ "Weiss! Ohhhh I've missed that face so much! How—" _

The screen abruptly went dark after Weiss made a petty jab at what she figured was the end button. A few seconds passed in silence before the device began to ring again. She crossed her arms and turned away with a huff, not wanting to acknowledge the disturbance radiating off her coffee table. A good twenty seconds must have gone by before she let out a frustrated sigh and reached over to answer, still refusing to look again.

_ "Okay, I might have deserved that." _

"Oh, you think?" Weiss shot back without turning around, "I'm not sure. All you did was steal international property."

_ "Well yeah, but—" _

"Run off with Penny to do god knows what."

_ "I know, I just—" _

"Abandon your team to the Atlas military."

_ "Weiss, I get it! Things were—" _

"And you didn't ever bother to tell me about any of it before you were long gone," tears were starting to crop up in the corners of Weiss's eyes, something she was grateful Ruby hadn’t been able to see, "We were supposed to be partners…"

Ruby was quiet for a second or two, allowing that last statement to hang in the air a bit before responding.

_ "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep you in the dark like that." _

Weiss composed herself after a sniffle, then turned around to face her former classmate. "You mean that?"

_ "Yeah. I wanted to get all three of you in on it." _

"What stopped you? You told Penny," there was an unmistakable edge of jealousy in her voice, but it was politely ignored by the other party.

_ "It's… complicated. I told Penny first because she was tied to a lot of it, already. It was, I dunno, easier to broach the subject with everything she already knew. With you and Blake and… Yang… I kept putting it off. Eventually, I realized I was about to hit the deadline so I knew I needed to bite the bullet and do it already. Problem was, I thought Cinder was going to go through with it during the finals." _

"So, she was early."

_ "Exactly. By that point I had to move fast to stop her and, with the umbrella girl still being a thing, I couldn't be sure who would've come in after me, so Penny needed to keep everyone else out." _

"That makes sense… I guess," Weiss had seen the reports on that team's known abilities. The umbrella girl, Neo or Mint, worked glamours with her semblance. She'd even seen it herself fighting Torchwick on the highway. It seemed like Ruby was telling the truth, not that she had a reason to lie in the first place. 

"You still hurt our friends. Do you have any idea how bad it was?"

_ "...I figured. I don't really have the details, though." _

"Well… Ren can probably still get his license and work in the field with some special training. Pyrrha… I don't think she can."

_ "Oh…"  _ a blatant display of shame and regret was carried through the screen as Ruby’s gaze grew long and unfocused. This wasn't one of the expressions Weiss was familiar with. Almost everything she had seen on Ruby’s face had been some combination of fierce, hyperactive, and sometimes meek. This was haunted.  _ "I didn't mean to. It—" _

"—was an accident. Yang told me you said that. Ruby," Weiss's gaze sharpened as though it would pin her partner down and force the answers from her, "why did you do all of this?"

_ "To save Remnant." _

It was such a simple response; only three small words. Weiss wasn't sure it was sufficient for the full story, but she wasn't sure pushing the subject was all that good an idea. She had heard the story of Summer Rose, or, at least the one Ruby told her. She could understand that desire to just get rid of the Grimm for the good of humanity. Who hadn't had that thought at least once in their life? Still, Ruby thought she could actually do it. At least, from what she could tell, this wasn't some naked grab at power for the sake of it. That had never been the Ruby she knew and it was refreshing to know that part of her was real.

Silence reigned for a time, awkward but somewhat familiar as the two young women struggled to determine the next subject of discussion. Then, hesitantly, Ruby spoke up.

_ "Would you have really gone with me if I'd told you?"  _ The hypothetical question had such a hopeful tone to it, like a child asking their friend if they wanted to come spend the night.

"I don't know. Maybe? I mean, would you have really taken me if I wanted to go?"

_ "Totally! You're smart, talented, capable! You're the best! Why wouldn't I take you?" _

Weiss's pale cheeks flushed a dark scarlet like the inside of her jacket collar. She brought her knee up and hugged it to hide most of her face. "I–It’s not like it really matters anymore. I'm stuck here. Doing nothing…"

_ "That bad, huh?" _

"The worst. Father seems to have forgotten that I'm capable of anything. I feel like I'm being wasted here."

_ "Yeah, that sounds pretty rough. It sounds kinda like when Dad would take me camping instead of Uncle Qrow. Uncle Qrow would let me go out and hunt our dinner. Dad just brought hamburger to grill." _

"Wait, he let you hunt for food? How old were you?"

_ "I dunno, twelve maybe?"  _ Ruby screwed up her face and stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth as though it took a little effort to remember that far back, then stopped all the sudden as though remembering something she'd meant to say the whole conversation.  _ "Oh! I think I might have something for this! See, even if you can't be on Amity, I could still use a little help. See, Cinder packed the stadium with a ton of Dust, but it's not exactly an unlimited supply. I'm gonna need to figure out a way to resupply pretty soon or I won't even be able to keep her airborne." _

"I'm failing to see how this is going to help me," Weiss dropped her knee to reveal a scowl, "I'm not even remotely attached to the procurement or storage side of the SDC. I'm stuck in corporate."

_ "I mean, are you though?"  _ There was a devilish glint in Ruby's reflective gaze; the kind Weiss had learned to dread when they were hanging around the dorms with nothing to do.

"I know that look, Ruby. What are you getting at?"

_ "Welllll, I just figure you need to do what I did when I was twelve or whatever. Your dad doesn't want to let you hunt. You need to go to somebody with almost as much authority as him who will, like an uncle. Do you have any uncles?" _

"That—" Weiss was about to launch into some harsh criticism about Ruby’s terrible metaphor before cutting herself off when she realized she locked the energy to do so. "No uncles. No aunts, either. The closest thing I could think one one would be Papaver, but—"

_ "Oh, your dad's right hand?" _

"You know him?" Weiss shouldn't have been surprised at Ruby for knowing more than she let on about things. That was the major factor in her recent life changes, after all. Still, it caught her off guard.

_ "I've looked into him. Seems like a real scary guy. The sink or swim kind." _

"Yes…" Weiss touched the scar over her eye absent-mindedly, "You could definitely say that."

_ "Sounds like the kind of guy who might let you hunt if you say the right things." _

So, that was what she was getting at. Weiss began to think back to all the time they'd spent and wondered if Ruby had displayed such devious intent back then. One or two prank wars she'd had with Yang said absolutely.

"I guess he is," Weiss conceded. He was the one she had confronted to go to Beacon, after all. It wouldn't have been possible with her father, but Papaver was always willing to negotiate if he thought he could get something out of it.

_ "Well, there you go. You're a huntress, right? Go hunt like I know you can." _

Ruby was right. Weiss was a huntress. Even if she could never attend another academy in the kingdoms, she would still be a huntress. It was what she wanted. It was the one thing she and all her true friends had wanted. So, yes. She would find Papaver. She would make whatever deal she had to with him and she would start making the world a better place.

She would hunt again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, hope the day's been good to you!  
> I just here because I got a review on my FF.net version of the story that made some legitimate points about how my use of POV characters is effecting the pacing of the story. So, after Finding Your Feet is Finished, I'm gonna mix up the story structure by making my macro chapters focus on specific groups of POV involved in the same plotline to allow for better pacing (Example: Ruby, Penny, and Sun in Mistral for one macro chapter, then Yang and Blake for another, and so forth). Hopefully this should cut back on waiting for the plot to go places. Please bear with me if you can, though. I am highly inexperienced with this POV chapter style of writing and I've still got some stuff to figure out.  
> Until then, please continue to enjoy the story!


	23. Finding Your Feet: Penny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *CONTENT WARNING*: This chapter contains a detailed autopsy of a human body. It is not overtly gory, but the removal of organs and incisions are described. Please feel free to skip this chapter if you are not comfortable with that sort of content.

“Amity Colosseum temporary infirmary, occupying Northwest Anima airspace. The time is 1403 hours WAST. This is Prototype Emulation of Neural Network Youth, also known as Penny Polendina, performing an autopsy on the body of one Cinder Fall, no known alias.”

The subject had been laid before Penny on a simple table in a food court stall that was acting as their makeshift morgue for the time being. A scroll lay blinking on an adjacent table, poised to record her observations in real time.. Behind her hummed a decent sized chest freezer that would serve to hold the organs after removal. While the ice block Penny had made with Amity’s biome tech had been more than adequate at preserving the body until it was time for dissection, a sealed cube like that would be less than efficient to use when needing to retrieve different parts for further study. Thus, the organs would go into the freezer for later study, while the body (which was too large for any of the freezers she or Ruby had managed to scavenge) would be encased once more after a thorough examination.

While Penny was certain her skills were adequate to perform this duty herself, she still found herself wishing she had some assistance in the matter. Ruby had declined to do so, but had not made an explanation for why she had done so other than a few vague claims of having ‘other things to do’. Penny found herself skeptical of this, but had not felt any need to push the subject at the time. It was likely this evasion had something to do with the woman on the table. When they were planning their move at Beacon, Ruby had been especially disdainful whenever Cinder Fall was brought up in the conversation, much more than with the other co-conspirators like Roman Torchwick or Emerald Sustrai.

Ruby had told Penny nothing about the fight and Penny had a number questions as to how she had accomplished such a feat as killing this woman. This woman who, aside from having at least several years more experience than Ruby, also possessed abilities the two of them had yet to entirely understand. This autopsy was Penny's chance to piece together the events of that evening.

Before any incisions were made, Penny made a thorough examination of the outer body. There was a shallow cut on the left cheek, numerous scratches on the forearms and biceps, and bruising on the palms and knuckles. There was a sizable puncture between the right breast and collarbone. Turning the body over, Penny found another at the left kidney. The general shape of both was consistent with spear point impalement.

"Possible cause of death identified: impalement of the torso. Wound most likely inflicted by secondary melee implement of huntsman weapon classified as Crescent Rose. Spear appears to have entered from the back at a low, upwards angle and emerged out the front."

Of the notable scythe wielding huntsmen on file (and there were very few at that) most had only a single large blade as their means of inflicting harm up close. Ruby's design stood apart with its inclusion of a triangular blade used for piercing attacks. Most opponents failed to take notice of this aspect of the weapon, as their eye was typically drawn to the imposing threat of the primary blade on the other end. Ruby must have exploited that to land the final blow. In addition, the damage to the arms and hands indicated Fall must have been fighting hand to hand for most of the battle. That was odd. Security footage of the CCT break in had shown Fall possessed the ability to manifest weapons from what appeared to be thin air. Why would she have neglected an obvious advantage like that?

Everything of note on the outside had been accounted for, so it was time for the first incision. With mechanical precision, Penny made a curved slit along the shoulders and then a straight one down to the pubic area. Though she was trained to operate blades above anything else, she had only ever cut into human skin a handful of times and never so deep. As her Floating Array glided through the muscle and fat, she considered her own skin. What would it be like to have hers removed the way this was? She supposed that had already happened, once. It had been in Vale, when she stopped that truck. She hadn’t been fast enough to focus more aura into her hands, but her frame had been durable enough to stay intact with nothing but a basic all-body enhancement. Her palms, however, had been totally shredded by the impact. Had she felt much of anything in that moment? No. If anything, the events that followed were far closer to the sensation described to her as pain. She had been terrified. Ruby, her first friend from the world outside her father’s lab, was about to learn her secret. Ruby would see all the parts of her that were ugly, wrong, unnatural. What other reaction could there be than disgust in an event like that? Yet, that hadn’t been the case. That event, which Penny had feared would tear them apart, had only brought them closer together.

The ribcage now exposed, two of Penny’s blades shifted to their alternate form as she determined the burst length necessary to start cutting through each rib. The weapons worked in perfect symmetry, lime green beams of plasma carving through each segment just long enough to completely separate the bone without damaging the rest of the subject. Once every rib had been snipped, Penny took hold of the sternum and gently lifted the ribcage out of the chest cavity, exposing the inner workings for all to see. It seemed more and more likely the impalement had been what had killed Cinder in the end. The left kidney and right lung had been torn apart and she could already see major damage to a few vertebrae that must have been nicked by the blade. Her eyes roamed the cavity as her blades began disconnecting the organs for harvest.

Penny began listing off the biological functions of each organ in her head as she collected them for storage in the chest freezer. Her own functions were similar, though hardly identical. She could breathe, for instance, but doing so was not for the sake of providing the blood with oxygen to disperse through her body. It was merely a secondary cooling process to keep her internal temperature stable. Her stomach was just a battery to be regularly charged so she might have the energy to function. Waste disposal was little more than a replacement of lubricating fluids and filters. It used to be that she was ashamed of being like this and, on bad days, she still was. However, Ruby had expressed an intense fascination with Penny’s processes over the last several months. She’d always been sure to emphasize how it was ‘just like this’ or ‘so incredibly cool’ the way Penny’s body worked. It was sweet. It let Penny feel happy with herself a bit more often.

“Aside from those destroyed by impalement, all organs appear to be in healthy condition and—wait. There is a small amount of spotting on the heart, suggesting… oxygen deprivation? One moment, please.”

Penny set her sights on the subject’s face once more to find what she must have missed. As she suspected, the eyes were bloodshot and the lips had just a hint of purple in them. There was a hint of purple on the ears too. The discoloration was extremely slight, almost unnoticeable if one was not looking for it, but it was definitely there.

“Subject appears to have been suffering from early hypoxia at time of death. I am unsure as to the cause of this, however, given everything known about the subject’s location at time of death. Perhaps…”

Turning to access Amity’s internal network, Penny brought up information of the control center to see if it had any of the subsystems she was thinking of. Sure enough, she found the room was capable of forming a hermetic seal in the event of a biohazard scenario. Scrolling the logs, she saw that, at the time the fight had taken place, a hermetic seal had been formed for 7 minutes and 23.7 seconds before being broken and allowing ventilation to circulate air back into the room.

The pieces were finally coming together. Ruby must have formed the seal to cut off the oxygen supply to the control center. No oxygen would mean nothing to sustain a flame. After only a few blasts of fire, the room would have been totally deprived and Cinder would have nothing more than her hands to work with. Ruby must have planned out that strategy ahead of time and had a rebreather with her to avoid the effects of oxygen deprivation long enough to finish it. It was an effective plan; bold, decisive, and incredibly risky. Penny could only wonder if Ruby had withheld this plan from her to avoid a leak or because she would have totally objected to it out of fear for Ruby’s life. Penny supposed it had worked out all right, but she could only hope this wouldn’t be a recurring factor in their partnership.

With the organs sorted and stored, that just left the brain. 

Once again, Penny’s blade transformed and began a laser incision along the scalp of the elevated head. Once the ring completed, she took hold of the now detached cap and slid it off with an audible pop. The grey matter now exposed, Penny took the mass in her hands to give her weapon a clearer angle in which to sever the stem from the spinal cord. It only took a moment before the whole brain was able to slide out unimpeded. As it came out, Penny nearly dropped the incredibly complex bundle of neurons at the sight of something black, white, and red latched to the underside. It looked like a beetle, the kind you would expect to find in a lush forest, but it was unmistakably Grimm.

“Grimm specimen found attached to subject’s medulla oblongata. Insectoid in form. Scanning morphology and comparing to the current worldwide database of discovered Grimm subspecies in attempt to locate a match.” The data flew behind her eyes at a blazing speed, hundreds of images all black, white, and red flashing to compare. After 12.792 seconds, all likely results had been cross referenced by secondary software to no avail. “No matching subspecies on file. Disappointing, but not entirely out of the ordinary.”

New Grimm subspecies were being discovered every day, after all. It was just another factor that made the Grimm so enigmatic and unpredictable. The only thing that surprised Penny was how she would be cataloguing her own discovery of such a creature so early into this endeavor with Ruby.

What in the world was going on here, though? Possession type Grimm were rare, but hardly unheard of. They could seep into objects, animals, and even people to control their actions. However, no Grimm possession on record had managed a seamless infiltration of human society the way Cinder had. It seemed impossible, considering the limitations of Grimm consciousness. Even a centuries older possessor easily gave itself away in extended conversation. No, Cinder Fall’s mind had been human. There was no doubt about that. So, what was this thing that, despite being in the presence of a live aura for at least a minute, still hadn’t acknowledged Penny’s existence?

“Unknown Grimm appears to be dormant, as it has made no aggressive moves against my person or attempted escape. I will now extract it to attempt a more thorough examination.”

Instead of relying again on her blades, Penny produced a large pair of tweezers she had scavenged from a stadium first aid kit and began the delicate task of prying the beetle’s legs from the grey matter, all the while keeping poised in case the creature lashed out at her. It remained unresponsive with every leg. At last, she managed to free it from its perch and lay it gingerly on an unoccupied space.

Penny’s vision magnified and got another look at this new specimen before her. This thing could have easily fit within the palm of her hand. It had no protruding bone growth that was indicative of older Grimm. Whatever this was, it hadn’t been doing any growing inside its host.

Slowly, methodically, Penny reached out with the tweezers to grasp the specimen once again. She needed to secure it for further study, even knowing how dangerous it was to put Grimm in captivity. Unfortunately, as her instrument made contact with the creature, it finally decided to wake up. The beetle made a sharp pivot, its four red eyes locking onto Penny’s with alien intent. It let out a sharp hiss, then moved to attack. Floating Array raced into formation as the Grimm spat up what looked to be some kind of awful sap. One of Penny’s blades intercepted it as another shot forward to pin the thing before it could escape. The blade sunk into the countertop with an audible thunk, but the beetle had leapt out of the way at the last second to avoid it. It flew up a few inches to land on the collar of the now empty corpse, ready to continue its blood feud.

Penny decided she needed to end this now.

Floating Array circled the beast to ensure there would be no escape. It hissed and thrashed, but found no exit among the wall of sharp titanium. In an instant, the blade at its blindspot shifted and fired out a quick, precise pulse that struck the beetle between its unfolded shell.

All that aggression died out in the blink of an eye as the lifeless husk dropped into the chest cavity and began its rapid decomposition. Penny had seen Grimm die before, she knew there was no chance at preserving a dead specimen. Still, she knew killing it had been the right choice. Who knows what it might have been capable of if it had been let loose into the stadium.

For a brief moment, Penny swore the particles of that Grimm looked different from those she had seen before. There seemed to be a brief shine to them, though it was very hard to see. After a second, she shook off that observation. It was likely just a reflection from the overhead light she’d been using for visibility.

More than a little shaken, Penny recalled the brain that still needed to be stored. With everything catalogued and in its proper place, she readied herself to take what was left of the body to its ice block. Picking up the scroll that had been knocked off its table in the commotion, she let out an anxious chuckle and made her closing statement.

“...I believe the examination is over, now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Hope you're enjoying the refurbished AAtP. It was initially restricted to fanfiction.net, but I've decided to port it over here as well and see how it works out, as well as have another backup in case something weird happens. Look forward to new content coming very soon as I resurrect this dead project from its four year old grave and see if it can walk among the fandom once more.


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